My Random Life

Musings on Boston

2011-08-09T12:08:00.004-04:00

In my absence from writing, due to a variety of factors (cross country road trip, Step 2 studying, sub-internship, moving apartments), there came up a few things about Boston in the news that I felt warranted my blog's attention.

1) GQ Magazine named Boston the country's worst dressed city. It comes as no surprise to Lawrence and me- for years now we've been remarking on just how poorly dressed people our age are here. Red Sox hoodies are just not acceptable attire for a night on the town. (Now the other issue is of course that "a night on the town" consists of going to a sports bar, i.e. paying for expensive drinks so one can watch television with other frumpy bar customers. I can't even begin to address that here.)

2) The University of Michigan researchers have found Boston to be the meanest city in America. In a survey conducted by these researchers measuring the "character strengths" of individuals living in cities across America, including "strengths of the heart" (i.e. kindness), Boston came in dead last. Again, no surprise to Lawrence and me. In the 6 years we've now lived here, never have we felt at home. We're consistently attacked (verbally) for being New Yorkers, yelled at by pedestrians crossing the street when they don't have right of way at lights, and told we "speak good English".

3) Tow train intended to pick up broken down redline train breaks down in the process of towing. I've blogged about the T here being inconsistent, unreliable, and inconvenient before, but this one takes the cake. During a July heat wave, the tow train that was supposed to tow a broken redline train between Porter and Harvard Squares during the morning rush hour commute broke down in the process of towing the train. As a result, after hours of waiting, a little less than 500 sweaty commuters had to walk through the redline tunnels to find an alternate route to work. I was on my sub-I that month at MGH for which I relied on the redline to commute. I guess this was the one time that having to catch an awfully early 6:20AM train to get to the sub-I by 7AM actually worked in my favor.

Ahh Boston. At least this city's quirkiness (to put it nicely) is amusing and easily feeds the fire of longing for our home cities that we non-natives often fan.

Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is Dead!

2011-04-27T11:20:00.002-04:00

"Ding dong! The Wicked Witch is dead!"

I sang these lyrics on April 21, 2011 in the afternoon, after my last day with OR responsibilities. The Surgery Wicked Witch was dead!

And I found myself continuing to sing these lyrics into the next day, the last day official day of Surgery and of third year, both happening to be my on 28th birthday. (Happy Birthday to me!)

"She's gone where goblins go, below-below-below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out."

I sang these lyrics in my mind as I continued to celebrate all good things happening on Friday, during lunch with friends, during a walk in the park around the MFA, while sitting on the lawn of the Quad at HMS greeting fellow classmates, "Congratulations! You've made it!" And I soon realized it was also the Third-Year Wicked Witch being dead too.

Though I found myself elated that what is supposed to be the second hardest year of medical training (after intern year) as well as the toughest rotation of that year was over, I was saddened that my elation was not out of a sense of accomplishment, but out of a joy of escaping the wicked witches, a joy of it just being over.

Don't get me wrong. Third year and surgery are tough, and one would be crazy to want to go through it all over again. I'm not crazy. But isn't it intrinsically sad that after the first time I'm allowed to be truly a part of patients' care, after the first time I can act like a doctor, that all I can celebrate is its' end?

To be fair, of course, it's everything else about third year and surgery, everything other than the patients, that made me want to escape. I guess I'm just saddened to realize that a gift as special as being able to take care of patients can be couched in attitudes and workplaces so toxic as to make me be happy to run away from it all, all the way, in fact, to a Master's in Education for a year.

I guess that's just the way it is? Maybe we can change it one day? Ack, too heavy of a topic for me to think about right now as I try to cram for Step 2 of the boards that I'll be taking in just a week and a half. Ignorance is bliss, for now.

But one thing's for sure; no matter how dire I view medical education to be, third year and surgery are still over for me!

Coroner: "As the Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, but she's really most sincerely dead."

Mayor: "Then this is a day of Independence for all the munchkins and their descendents."

(Wise) Barrister: "If any."

Mayor: "Yes, let the joyeous news be spread! The Wicked old Witch at last is dead!"

One Day More

2011-04-09T13:41:00.004-04:00

I have stolen a small bit of my time on-call this beautiful 63F Saturday to blog about a moment fresh in my mind. This morning, I was walking to the hospital at 5:30AM, when it was still 36F and before the sun even thought about rising. I was happily thinking that today is my last call day. (That's right, it's finally my last call day, not just for surgery but for third year!) Unexpectedly, I starting to sing a song in my head.

"One day more! Another day, another destiny. This never-ending road to Calvary."

"Really?" I thought to myself. "Is this day that momentous, requiring so dramatic a song to pop into my head as the one sung in Les Miserables before the French Revolution?" (And why do I know all the lyrics to this epic song? I can't remember risk factors for certain surgical diseases after being on a surgery clerkship for 10 weeks now, but I can remember the lyrics and tune of a song I haven't heard in years.) Even with this sort of perspective, I still couldn't help but keep singing the song in my head.

"Tomorrow we'll be far away. Tomorrow is the judgement day. Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in Heaven has in store! One more dawn! One more day! One day more!"

By the end of the song in my head, I had gotten so into it that I was on a march towards the hospital. I was ready to grab the call day by the cahones, ready to start a revolution. This was it. This IS it.

But after rounding with the team for 5 hours before jumping into a long consult, I realized I wasn't really that close to the end; surgery managed to beat down my spirit, again. I still have a full 8 days of being in the OR for surgery, a day for the dreaded shelf exam, and another day for an oral exam. And I have a summer full of clinical coursework, including a sub-I that will include many a call night. So really, not even close.

But tomorrow morning, when I walk out of hospital having spent my last night in the hospital for all of surgery, for all of third year, and if my sub-I has a nightfloat system, for all of medical school, I will feel an incredible sense of accomplishment and a relief that I've made it through third year (most of it). I won't care that I still have a way to go. I'll just be exhausted and happily marching home victoriously to the tune of Jean Valjean.

Addendum: Just got out of call night after 27 hours up. Tough hand to be dealt on the last one, and truth be told I was angry on the walk home. But now that I'm in my PJs sitting in my sunny living room, I realize that overnight call is over, finally over. Can't get me now, call.

I Don't Want the 1 2 3

2011-02-23T18:43:00.005-05:00

I only hope my children one day will be as excited about the New York City subway system as Christoph Niemann's sons. With my odd love of maps, my neurotic need to figure out the most efficient route between places, and my (one time I feel justified in boasting) keen sense of direction, they'll have a 50/50 shot of referring to red things as "the 1 2 3". (Lawrence's sense of direction is, well, less than accurate.) Click here to read "The Boys and the Subway", his blog post on the New York Times website with words and art illustrating his boys' uncanny love of the MTA.

The 4th Quarter

2011-01-30T18:50:00.004-05:00

I've made it to the 4th quarter, of third year. In football, the 4th quarter is the quarter that counts. Games are won or lost in the fourth quarter. (Just ask Eli Manning. Stupid Eagles.)

But in third year, many students, myself included, are hoping to slide through their 4th quarters. I'm not hoping to win; I just want to survive. We've all had 9 hard months of being the kid sibling (med student) who has to play with older siblings (residents and interns) but is never told the rules. AND, those older siblings, and thus rules, change every 2-4 weeks. Then there's the pimping (i.e. interns/residents/attendings asking you harder and harder questions until you get it wrong and feel completely inadequate); if only pimping didn't happen every 5 minutes, then I might not feel completely inadequate all day, everyday. Let's not forget that during all of this, our actual goal is to transform our minds from being encyclopedic to being clinical; we're supposed to figure out how to actually be doctors, starting as 2nd year encyclopedias of disease and transforming into 3rd year clinicians treating disease. No wonder I'm tired.

The 4th quarter (and 3rd year) ends on my birthday. My present to myself will be to get to that day no more wounded/hurt/tired than I am today. The name of the game now for these last 3 months is survival. Wish me luck.

Amusement at the Staten Island Mall

2010-12-29T11:22:00.005-05:00

"You're definitely not from the Brooklyn/Staten Island area, " was the line from a sweet Staten Island, Italian mother who was selling me jewelry at the Staten Island Mall right before Christmas. We had been chatting about rubies when she abruptly asked where I was from.

"I'm from here, but I live in Boston now."

I had expected that she would next pose the usual next question, "I mean where are you really from?", usually referring to my unidentifiable ethnic background.

"Oh Bawston. That's far. You're definitely not from the Brooklyn/Staten Island area."

"No no. I was born at St. Vincent's. I went to Notre Dame Academy and Staten Island Tech."

"No." She looked me in the eyes. "You just don't sound it like. No offense."

Moral of my trip to "the Mall": Can't live in Staten Island; can't live without it.

Staten Island Winter Wonderland

2010-12-27T18:24:00.011-05:00

The house I grew up in that my mother still lives in in Staten Island sits right on the hilly Silver Lake Golf Course. In the 24 years we've had the house, I never managed to hop the fence and hang out on the golf course. Until yesterday. I never knew how fun or, dare I say it, beautiful, Staten Island can be.

With 30 inches of snow on the ground and no plow this morning to clear our street at the bottom of a steep hill, we had nowhere to go and nothing to do, except play in the snow.

The snow adventure started yesterday with a walk through the golf course and a little sledding.

It continued today with some igloo wins;

and fails;

some acrobatics;

some moments of zen;

until it slid into a sledding bonanza.

and finally sledded into the Staten Island sunset.

Our street had still not been plowed by the time we returned to the house. NYC plows will likely not make it down to our little street today. Maybe tomorrow. If not, we'll continue to be stuck at the house with more snow adventures to come!

Nature vs. Nature

2010-12-21T19:12:00.007-05:00

Lawrence has one-upped himself. His most recent paper has made the prestigious journal Nature, and has also caught on in popular media. He's been on MSNBC, slashdot (the geekiest geek site around), and the official story on the homepage of MIT.

His research details how modern day genomes are in fact "fossils" through which we can learn about past geologic events, including the introduction of oxygen into Earth's atmosphere. His research is multi-disciplinary, spanning several facets of nature. Cool stuff, so cool that I complemented Lawrence today, "Your nerdiness has made the papers!"

But apparently, his contribution to knowledge about nature isn't nearly as cool on digg.com as "Dog in Germany gives birth to 17 puppies". While Lawrence's research was "dugg" 80+ times, the multi-parous dog was "dugg" 260+ times. Lawrence's nerdiness just isn't as popular septendecuplets (i.e., 17-uplets).

Yay Lawrence anyway!

Dear Darla

2010-12-02T23:45:00.005-05:00

A summation of my experience tonight, in the spirit of "The Little Rascals":

Dear Darla (Boston Public Transportation),

I hate your stinkin guts (and your antiquated trains and roadways that made my 40 minute round-trip ride to and from an on-call night take 3 hours). You make me vomit (as you did the obnoxious passengers coming from a Bruins game who were also on the train, though their inclination may have been motivated by toxins other than you). You are scum between my toes (making my tired, swollen feet from running around all day and night on the hospital floors all the worse).

Love,
(Hate, as in the MIT reference IHTFP,)
Alfalfa
(Me)

Burning Out

2010-11-16T21:58:00.004-05:00

Why I am never oriented to date? As a third year medical student, I often have to assess whether my patients are alert and oriented to themselves, the date, and their location as a sign of their mental status. Not only do I have to look at my beeper to confirm the date the patient is saying, but I have to do so for each of the 2-3 patients I pre-round on everyday (i.e. examine at 6AM). I just don't register the date.

Is my brain too saturated? Probably not since I don't usually have the answers to questions I'm pimped on (i.e. progressively harder questions from superiors until you just don't have the answer anymore, i.e. Superior, "what is the temperature of cheese fridges in supermarkets?" Student answer," 5-10 degrees C?" Superior, "no, 4. Why 4?" Student with puzzled look on face, "I don't know." Superior, "listeria." Student answer, "Oh." Student thought "F******CK !"). I think my altered mental status is actually a sign of my burning out, as evidenced in my inability to coherently write this blogpost.

Luckily, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, in time for me to regroup. Funny enough, everyday that I look at the date, I groan about not knowing the date and about my burning out, but then am pleasantly surprised, everyday, that Thanksgiving is in fact around the corner. Well, at least my daily self-reorientation usually ends with a happy thought.

50 Reasons to Be Jealous of Those Living in NYC

2010-11-05T16:07:00.003-04:00

After getting out from the hospital relatively early on this lovely Fall Friday, the day before my black weekend (i.e. the weekend where I need to work at the hospital Saturday and Sunday, aka worst weekend of the month), a fellow med student and I bonded over missing New York, our collective home. According to the Village Voice blog "Runnin' Scared", the reasons we miss New York are indeed the reasons why people who live in NYC are "pretty damn euphoric" to live there. I've copied them below from the blog; I can't say I agree with all of them (Chic-Fil-A at NYU cafeteria?), but oh man does it make me miss home.

Source: Runnin' Scared : A Voice News Blog. URL: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/11/50_reasons_to_b.php

50. Sending your laundry out for someone else to wash and dry it is not only convenient, it's just good business. Especially since you will probably never own a washer and dryer. Which means you never have to feel guilty about not doing your own laundry. Next.

49. Drinking coffee four times a day, every day, isn't the exception, it's the rule.

48. The secret Chick Fil-A at the NYU dining hall.

47. There is always someone crazier than you. ALWAYS.

46. The view from the Brooklyn Bridge.

45. The view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

44. The epic feeling you get running to catch a train and succeeding...just before the doors close.

43. Bored to Death. 30 Rock. SNL. And a million other things that film here and we love. RIP Law and Order.

42. Manhattan-Brooklyn/Brooklyn-Manhattan wars never cease to entertain. Nor do hipster-Hasid wars. Or hipsters in general.

41. We get the inside jokes. Because, actually, we made them up in the first place.

40. That horrified look on our parents' friends' faces when we tell them we live in "Hell's Kitchen."

39. Sure, we work out next to Alec Baldwin, Padma Lakshmi, and Bridget Moynahan, and walk the streets with Willem Dafoe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Tina Fey, but, really, we're kinda too busy with our own lives to notice.

38. Drinking is like breathing. Or slightly more acceptable.

37. Because it's not enough to just love New York. New York needs to love you back, too. Hey, we have high standards.

36. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, there is someone who will bring it to you for a price, which may or may not be negotiable. (Or legal.)

35. By the time the rest of the nation has bedbugs, we'll have figured out how to get rid of them. In the meantime, we'll mock them by dressing our dogs up as bedbugs for Halloween. Laugh in the face of fear, New Yorker!

34. There are almost 200 bars in the East Village alone.

33. There's no shortage of stupid rich people to make fun of.

32. The endless delights of the New York Post.

31. You don't even need a passport, or a license, to partake in goat-eyeball tacos.

30. The fact that one-bedroom apartments cost an average minimum of a half-million dollars means we think nothing of spending $12 on lunch.

29. Restaurants are as common as single men and women. And equally diverse. And you never have to see either of them again after the initial awkward encounter.

28. The omnipresent opportunity to Gaga-ify yourself. And the chance that it will seem, just, normal.

27. Runnin' Scared lives here! (And so does the Village Voice.)

26. Smart people are the norm, not the exception. (Which doesn't mean they're sane, but at least no one's boring.)

25. Except in select 'hoods like Park Slope and perhaps the Upper West Side, children are viewed as mysterious beings, rarely sighted and only occasionally understood, like pixies or magical small butlers. Until they scream, in which case, they are banished from the palace.

24. When you fly back into the city after a vacation or business trip, no matter how long you've lived here, you get that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling.

23. Efficiency in a drugstore checkout line.

22. How easy it is to find doughnuts, pizza, Chinese food, or any other snack your drunken self desires at 4 a.m. Or to continue to drink. Responsibly!

21. Broadway. Museums. CULTCH-AH. Even if you never actually go to see anything (though you should, at least once).

20. Yelling "fuck" is just a mild obscenity.

19. There's no shame in sticking your fingers in your ears like an anal weirdo when an ambulance goes by screeching.

18. Summer concerts at the Williamsburg Waterfront.

17. So many Missed Connections, so little time.

16. Other places have dog and cat people. We have ferret people.

15. The splendor of the Union Square Greenmarket.

14. A bagel with cream cheese and lox from Russ and Daughters.

13. There is an insane Korean day spa (Spa Castle) waiting for you in Flushing. And Russian and Turkish baths in the East Village.

12. One of our bars has 100-year-old urinals.

11. Complain about the MTA, but you can get anywhere in the city for just $2.25. Or $2.50 single ride, come 2011. Still pretty damn cheap.

10. Subway rage. Bike-lane rage. Walking rage. Random rage. These are our therapy. Although we all go to therapy, too. No judgments! We bitch, therefore we are.

9. Jaywalking is an art form.

8. The free Ikea ferry to Red Hook on weekends! Plus, Red Hook in general. Can you say "Lobster pound"?

7. Subway "prewalking," in which you walk to the exact right spot on the platform to board the train car that will save you the most time upon exit, exists and has a name. Gotta respect.

6. You can be alone, but never feel lonely. And vice versa. But if you die and aren't found until a year later, you won't be the first.

5. We are, as a group, anti-fanny-pack as much as we are pro-gay-marriage. Hetero marriage, on the other hand, we can pretty much take or leave.

4. 35 is the new 26. Or is it 45? Whatever, age ain't nuthin' but a number, and as long as you're younger than your IQ score, no harm, no foul.

3. Finding your "local" is that much better here.

2. There is absolutely no reason to ever drink and drive. Added bonus: Spontaneous, fascinating conversations with cab drivers.

1. If you can make it here, you really can make it anywhere. But why would you bother to go anywhere else?

Sisters Are Good for Your Health

2010-10-27T18:59:00.004-04:00

There now exists official science to support why I love talking to my sisters. According to a study recently published in the New York Times, it's good for me. I would also love to write about this more, but I'm currently on my medicine clerkship, and these few lines are all I can afford to write without taking away from sleep time. I'm actually complaining about it to my sisters right now, and I'll be all the happier for it.

For Market Basket

2010-09-26T18:52:00.004-04:00

Having recently moved from Cambridge to Boston, a mere two mile change, Lawrence and I have experienced a surprisingly different day-to-day life. We have different running routes. We eat at different restaurants. And for me, perhaps what's been most different, is our new supermarket routine. With Shaw's Supermarket now a mere two blocks away, my habits have changed; we make more trips since we usually come away with just enough to cover us for 1-2 days. This has changed my cooking habits, snacking patterns, and ability to instantly satisfy my cravings, like milk at 11PM to accompany the cookie cravings that sometimes come on then. (Believe it or not, this sort of thing is not always possible to pull off in Cambridge- surprising for what calls itself a "city", I know.) And perhaps most striking, our supermarket experience is now calm, calm as compared to Market Basket.

Ahh "The Basket", aka Market Basket. Market Basket is a family-owned chain of supermarkets in New England that generally has the best prices around as well as some of the freshest produce. At the Somerville store, the only one in the Boston area really, such deals and freshness were earned by mucking through the chaos that seems to always ensue in the store, no matter what time of day. Tons of people grab for the same items, push through already crowded aisles with their carts, and, motives unclear, run over unknowing customers unaccustomed to the Market Basket pace. This phenomenon is so well known amongst its regular shoppers that it has even been written up in the Boston Globe in an article titled "When Shopping Becomes a Roller Derby". At the end of the day, though, one always feels victorious having survived the shopping ordeal with such fantastic deals on food (including $3.99/lb lobster!).

Market Basket is a common experience that Cambridge and Somerville residents bond over. Two friends who have just moved to Canada from Cambridge visited us last week and asked how The Basket was doing. And it was in fact my sister who lived in Cambridge/Somerville for 5 years and just moved to San Francisco who sent me the Globe article. And it was sent to her by her friend who lived in Somerville for 4 years who now lives in San Diego. It seems to be one of the places people who leave fondly, more or less, remember. Given that I don't shop there anymore, I can be counted as one of them.

Even on Jersey Shore Staten Island Gets Dumped On

2010-09-23T18:44:00.003-04:00

"You should know about tragedy, bitch. You're from Staten Island."

Just thought I'd throw up a quote from the popular MTV show "Jersey Shore" to demonstrate the surprising lack of respect for Staten Island from even those whom one would think would appreciate it/call it the motherland.

It Must Be Love

2010-09-11T07:26:00.004-04:00

I've been attending the US Open every year since I was 7. It's always been the grand finale to my summers- the last hoorah before returning to school. This year, for one of the few times this 3rd year medical student can count on one hand (and sadly only the beginning of a lifetime of this), I haven't had a summer vacation. The one day I got to go home to NYC to spend at the US Open was the beginning, middle, and end of my summer, my sad summer.

Still, it turned out, as usual, to be everything I wanted and needed it to be. It was my 12 hours on the sidelines of glorious professional tennis. It was my time in the sun where I could forget, for a day, that I wasn't actually having a summer this year. It was time spent in my favorite city on the planet, with family I miss more and more with every year I live in Boston. It was the US Open.

It rejuvenated me. It inspired me. And I realized in the car ride home from Flushing Meadows that lone day that for all the memories I have there, for the anticipation and excitement it creates, for never being disappointing, for being the grand finale, the US Open and I have fireworks. It must be love.

True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl?

2010-08-07T17:25:00.007-04:00

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Stowe, Vermont after having a lovely New England day. I was able to go for a 7.5 mile run through the woods, enjoy a tour of the Ben and Jerry's factory, and take a rest at the Trapp Family Lodge. I haven't felt this relaxed in a long time. As I plop down on the bed, I turn on the TV and stop flipping channels when I see a familiar face from elementary school. My eyes dart to the bottom right corner of the screen to see the MTV logo. Yes! True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl is on.

As relaxed as I am feeling already, I realize quickly that I only feel at home once the show is on. But the ladies on the show act and speak in remarkably different ways from the way I do, quickly reminding me of my misfit ways in Staten Island as an adolescent over a decade ago now. There seems to be a mutual awareness though; one father on the show exclaimed to his daughter, being featured on the show for her acting desires, "You've been talking like this for years. You may be normal to us, but you aren't normal to the acting world." I was "the world" in Staten Island who realized while living there that the accent, and the general lifestyle really, just wasn't normal. And I think the current popularity of the series "Jersey Shore", which features a good number of Staten Island natives who represent accurately summer life for Staten Islanders, validates my point.

Still, for better for for worse, those accents make me somehow feel at home. Does that mean that in true life, I'm a Staten Island girl?

"I Gotta Feeling...

2010-06-11T22:33:00.015-04:00

...that tonight's gonna be a good night."

That promising tag line of the catchy tune from the Black Eyed Peas is about the anticipation of something good to soon come. Its subtle brilliance, of course, stems from its ability to mean many different things to many different people. For broke, young New Yorkers, it is a pre-game promise of a good time coming at the hip bars/lounges/clubs they'll hit up for the night. For the African continent, well at least those who can or care to watch, tonight, it signaled the arrival of the World Cup and, perhaps finally, the world's focus and attention. But for me, the lame third year medical student who just finished her first fabulous rotation by taking a horrendous shelf exam and who has a husband trying to complete a dissertation, it means a night of leisurely dinner, of non-medical reading to my heart's content, of falling asleep without the fear of having to wake up to my dreaded alarm. Tonight's gonna be a good night. Wooohooo.

Mania, In Writing

2010-05-11T21:05:00.004-04:00

"Lectures- they're just soul-sucking," says my friend after we attended together our first lecture in over a month. With the last day of second year (and the last real lecture) long gone in late March, we had forgotten what learning from lecture is like.

I must confess that I'm only on my second week of third year, and I've had two light, no call weeks. Thus I can't really speak to what real third year is like yet, but I do know that learning in a clinical setting, though less efficient, sure makes for more interesting and engaging days. Luckily, we're only scheduled to be in lecture one afternoon per week or so in third year (I think). Let's see what I think after my first week of the wards, with call.

NB: Being on call, for those not familiar, for medical students in my hospital means that you are part of the team of healthcare providers that receives new patients onto the floors after normal business hours. Sometimes you get to leave by 10PM; other times you get, if you're lucky, 2 hours of sleep in a room the hospital provides for you; still other times, if you're really lucky, will leave you with no time to sleep at all and have you start the next day of work in that condition. That next day of work is called "post-call" and you usually get to leave 1/2 way through to go home and collapse.

Wow, writing out that likely inaccurate explanation made me long for the days of lecture just a little bit, when I was guaranteed at least 5 hours of sleep to try to recover the soul that was sucked out of me during the day.

Ugh.

My Guiltiest Pleasure

2010-04-03T08:57:00.005-04:00

Some indulge in chocolate. Others in People Magazine. I may be one who falls into both of those categories at times, but perhaps my guiltiest pleasure of all is watching Felicity (yes the 1998-2002 series on the WB starring Keri Russell) at big moments of transition in my life when I am nostalgic for things past.

Felicity has always been there for me- in my transition from high school to college, college to consultancy, consultancy to post-bac/science jobs, post-bac/science jobs to med school, and now pre-clinical med school to clinical med school. I always manage to find meaning in the too-obviously-scripted stories and the cheesy, unrealistic dialogue. Somehow, I always manage to find episodes serendipitously that relate to the current transition events of my life. I also strangely, or not, relate to the naive Felicity. I'm not sure I'm quite like her, but, for better or for worse, I do find myself reflecting on and looking for meaning in every moment; constantly thoroughly thinking things through; consistently self-reflecting.

Cat's out of the bag. I turn to Felicity in my transition periods. (And I own all 4 seasons on DVD; my sisters, who know me too well and also indulge in WB dramas, bought them for me as my college graduation gift.) Go ahead and judge me. I'm watching Felicity as I write this and I'm loving it.

Oddly Nostalgic

2010-04-03T08:18:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, second year came to an end. For all the times I cursed being in medical school and suffered insufferable afternoons and evenings in my books, I actually started to miss it yesterday as soon as it was over.

Let me clarify, I don't miss the studying. (Be it known that I am in fact still studying for Step 1 of the medical licensing board exam.) I'm going to miss the moments with best friends. (Cheese alert) The moments of misery that turn into hilarity, the moments of insanity where it's clear we've all cracked, the snark-tastic moments that only are funny to best friends who spend 8-12 hours a day together - those pre-clinical days are gone.

For sure, there will be new moments in the clinical years that will be equally if not more memorable, moments I'm not even capable of foreseeing right now. And they'll be just as important, if not more, in my medical school experience as my pre-clinical years are. Still I wanted to take the time to recognize the end of an important part of my life that was incredibly formative professionally and personally.

To bring my vision of these last two years back to reality, though, just like middle school and high school (for most people, myself included), this is a part of my life that I would not want to relive- just oddly nostalgically look back on.

Off to the boards and 3rd year!

CAGE-ed, for Coffee

2010-02-06T13:05:00.012-05:00

I've been CAGE-ed for coffee, indirectly. For those not familiar, CAGE is the acronym first year medical students and other health professionals are taught to remember for the questions to screen for alcohol abuse in adults.

C = Cut down: Have you thought about cutting down your alcohol use?
A = Aggravated or Annoyed: Do you ever get annoyed when someone asks you about your alcohol use?
G = Guilty: Do you ever feel guilty or bad for drinking?
E = Eye-opener: Do you find that you need to start your day off with a drink?

I've answered yes to all of these questions at some point, indirectly. How, you ask? In conversations with friends, family, acquaintances, strangers online at a coffee shop, and especially classmates, I've noticed that statements others make about themselves are delivered in such a way that makes me reflect on myself. Sometimes this can be productive, others destructive. But the point is that I've learned to be more careful about what I say about myself so as not to make someone around feel bad about themselves.

For example, a classmate once said to me, "Oooh, I never drink coffee. I try to avoid it. It's just so bad for you," while I was drinking my life blood from my green coffee mug one dreary morning. "People really need to learn to get off that." Another classmate in the room chimed in, "High five! (They actually high-fived here.) I don't drink coffee either! I just feel so much better about myself for it."

During this conversation, I said yes to the A: annoyed as I was in the middle of the E: eye-opener. I realize that too much coffee is probably not a good thing, but I think that, especially given that I was visibly drinking it, these individuals could have been more sensitive. It makes me wonder how they approach their patients who also have habits that may be less than desirable.

As always, I try to take lessons away from all situations. This situation presented one of the more interesting lessons I've learned so far in life: many pass judgment about others through self-laudatory statements to make themselves feel better. I use here my classmates' behavior as an example of what I've seen in many other places in my life: middle school, high school, college, consulting, RA-ing at MIT, research at both the bedside and the bench. The driver, I think, of such behavior is survival. Survival is the name of the game in medical school, middle school, consulting- you name it. Some get by by making others feel worse about themselves. This may be outright intentional, or may be a small trick one plays unintentionally in an effort to make oneself feel better.

I can't say that I'm not guilty of this myself. I am, however, at least aware and working on it: I'm cutting down, I'm annoyed with myself and feel guilty when I do make these comments (and this makes me want to cut down more), and I cannot remember the last time I needed an eye-opener to make myself feel better. Progress.

Now for that coffee...

Whom Did I Marry?

2010-01-24T18:09:00.001-05:00

Three quotes Lawrence hollers this morning from behind a locked bathroom as he is "sampling". We are now in month 9, for all you keeping track.

1) "It's taking me longer. It was a wet one."

2) "Oh my God! Why won't my butt get clean? I've been wiping for a while!"

3) "Come in here! You have to see this; it's shaped like a heart."

After I put up a good protest, he eventually wears me down and drags me in to take a look. I go in with my exquisitely sensitive nose and mouth covered. And I scream at the site. He laughs.

I start to blog about the experience since it seems particularly striking today that my life is somewhat surreal. In the middle of typing this, Lawrence finally leaves the bathroom with a clean butt and a tube of his own specimen and says, "Now wasn't that romantic?"

Welcome to my marriage to a scientist who samples his own poop for his dissertation.

Learning Just Happened Here

2009-12-06T18:20:00.003-05:00

I've hit another milestone on the med school path: learning the rectal and male genito-urinary tract exams.

I had an incredibly positive experience last Monday as I was fortunate enough (as all US med students are, I think) to learn from a patient-instructor who was generous enough to donate his time, efforts, and body to the greater medical education cause. I can't even imagine what it must be like for instructors to allow naive and inexperienced medical students to intimately explore the most private and protected parts of their bodies. And I can't thank my instructor and all other instructors out there for their important contributions to mine and my fellow classmates' educations. They have helped us become a little more comfortable during a part of the physical exam that can be almost as anxiety-provoking for the examiner as it is for the examinee.

Sadly, I haven't had as much time to reflect on the event and what it means to me. All I can come up with right now is the usual cliche of it prompting in me a deeper understanding of my obligation and duty to provide the best care possible for my patients, both on the individual and population levels, and my even greater gratitude for the privilege of being a part of my patients' lives in ways most people cannot be. Though all of this true, my gut tells me it doesn't quite describe what I want to express and how I felt about the experience. Hopefully more on that if I ever get the time to sit down and think about it.

Boston Motorists

2009-10-25T09:43:00.004-04:00

"Epileptic patients often have a hard time getting a license," one of my Neuro professors said as he was trying to teach my classmates and me about the psychosocial impact of epilepsy for those who suffer from it. "One can imagine the danger they can be on the road to themselves and others if they experience a seizure while behind the wheel. Their driving would be erratic and unpredictable with loss of car control." He then paused. I just knew he was about to drop a zinger.

"Observing motorist behavior on Boston roads, I would say that epilepsy must be incredibly prevalent here." He delivered the line with a sly smile.

Insensitive? Yes. Inappropriate? Yes. But still, that made my day.

Three Cheers for JNJ Turo-Turo

2009-10-25T09:31:00.005-04:00

Just thought I'd make a plug for the only Filipino restaurant in all of Massachusetts, and potentially all of New England.

When Lawrence and I first moved to Boston in 2005, we looked up on all sorts of food forums where to try to find a restaurant that served our comfort food, our family food- Filipino food. "For Filipino food in Boston," I remember one particularly angry Filipino in Boston wrote on yelp.com, "go to Queens. New York." Disappointing, I thought, but not surprising; among other things, Boston isn't exactly known for diverse cuisine.

In June 2007, that changed. JNJ Turo-Turo in Quincy opened its doors. It's an absolutely lovely place that serves delicious, not too greasy, homecooked Filipino food. Lawrence and I have tried to go every other week since we learned about it in December 2008. We find comfort there, as if we were somehow home with our families. It's really helped unfriendly Boston become a little more livable.

Anyway, I'm only making this plug now since 1) I'm between blocks in med school and have time to blog and read the paper and 2) it's recently been written up in the Boston Globe. (Find the article here and their website with a menu here.)

Living in a World of Fools

2009-09-30T21:39:00.005-04:00

Sometimes, it just takes the right lyric in the right song to make your dreary day go away.

"Cause we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down."

Yes, I just quoted The BeeGees. But somehow, they just made me feel better. They serenaded me, validating everything I've been struggling with lately and summarizing so eloquently (again, yes I just called The BeeGees eloquent) in one line all the angst I've been feeling and unable to verbalize so concisely.

I think this blog post is a testament to how tired I am right now. I need to sleep more than 5-6 hours a night so that I can find inspiration in something/someone other than The BeeGees.

Spain, Japan, the US, and Ondoy

2009-09-28T07:19:00.005-04:00

The Philippines can just never catch a break. Typhoon Ondoy left a month's worth of rain in Manila in just 12 hours. (See video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYrSYTIT3k0&feature=related) The destruction is heartbreaking. I wonder how long it will take to bring Manila back to what it was before the typhoon. The "Paris of the East", as Manila was once known to the world before WWII, continues to sink.

Goodbye, American Thai Restaurants

2009-09-11T14:35:00.002-04:00

No more Thai food in America for this little lady. Since returning from Bangkok, Lawrence and I haven't had the balls/ovaries to try Thai food again in America. We felt so spoiled by our time in culinary heaven (aka Bangkok street food vendor tables) that we figured that Thai food in the US would be a big disappointment.

With the beginning of 2nd year for me came the free lunch talks, serving Thai food. So I ventured. I took a scoopful of pad thai to my taste buds. I couldn't believe how "non-Thai" the pad thai tasted to me! I guess as expected, it was completely Americanized, i.e. bland.

Shortly after that first taste, my ears started to itch, the first sign in my body that I'm allergic to something I'm eating. Then my stomach started to ache. My body was physically rejecting American Thai food. I had to excuse myself from the talk to tend to my poor body in shock.

Looks like I'll have to return to Thailand to ever enjoy good Thai food again. Woe is me.

Summer in the City

2009-08-30T22:22:00.005-04:00

means cleavage cleavage cleavage. Well, it does, but those are Regina Spektor's words.

Summer in the city, for me, means smells smells smells. The heat and the humidity of New York City summers accentuates all the city has to offer the schnoz.

For the worse: Urine smells are more pungent. Dog poop takes a new, smellier life form. And if you are from Staten Island, the dump really rares its ugly head in the summer.

For the better: Fresh vegetables and herbs on windowsill gardens finally have life. Fragrance from the flowers sold at the corner delis can be enjoyed from across the street. Ice cream ice cream ice cream!

But for a prettier and just all around better presentation of this subject, I again turn to nytimes.com for help. In Op-Art, Jason Logan has created an interactive map of Manhattan that details of the smells he encountered during one sweltering weekend tour of Manhattan. Sometimes I think I should have just worked for the New York Times and found creative ways to express my love for NY, and get paid for it!

Back

2009-08-11T17:03:00.002-04:00

We've returned to Boston and our old lives. We've returned to using our bikes as our main medium of transportation, sleeping in an elevated bed, and having excellent water pressure in the shower. And we've also returned to taking the time to preparing our own meals.

This last one, surprisingly, has been a bit of a shocker. As I cooked breakfast this morning, I felt strange investing any time into our meals, even though we've been cooking in our lives away from home for almost a decade. Though I of course remembered all the usual motions of it, the routine felt foreign, almost wrong. For the last two months in Bangkok, we've been going out to the street every morning to buy breakfast. We'd get our Chinese donuts freshly made or our Puff & Pie bakery pastries or our 7-11 banana breads, each for less than 75 cents, and our usual big iced coffee for less than a dollar. We'd then come back to the apartment and watch CNN or True (i.e. Thai HBO) or Channel V (i.e. Thai MTV, but plays only music videos, so more like MTV of the 80s) and enjoy our ready-made meal. The whole routine provided a cheap, delicious, and filling breakfast after very little time investment.

Preparing meals is of course one of the many aspects of the culture shock/reacclimatizing Lawrence and I are experiencing. Funny how quickly you can get used to another way of life in just two short months.

More to come on the funny things about our life in Boston I never realized would be so thought-provoking as well as (hopefully) posts about what everyday life was like in Bangkok.

I am an MIT GRT (RA)

2009-07-29T04:43:00.003-04:00

Browsing nytimes.com on my laptop in the hospital as I waited to start my last week of homevisits here in Bangkok, I came across this article entitled, "In Study, Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Large Margin" as the top emailed story under the technology section. I thought to myself, "Wow, I had no idea that during studying texting can help people from crashing and burning. I'll have to keep this in mind when we get back to Cambridge and tell the kids. Texting and distractions are actually good for them!"

I proceeded to read the article and realized within the first paragraph that the "study" referred to a research study and that crashing a car was more likely to happen. I felt completely out of touch; I wasn't even close to deducing what the article was about from its (now very obvious) title.

You can take the girl out of the GRT position, but you can't take the GRT position out of the girl.

The Familiarity and Foreignness of Hong Kong

2009-07-20T07:21:00.005-04:00

Having grown up food shopping with my mom in Manhattan's or Brooklyn's Chinatown once a week for 18 years, I felt very comfortable in Hong Kong this past weekend. I interpreted Hong Kong to be the equivalent of Chinatown expanding beyond Canal Street and taking over the island of Manhattan. The sounds, the smells, the sights- it was all so familiar. I had the same Sunday brunch as I do in New York (dim sum! but better in HK of course). I rushed through the same, pushy (and shorter (woohoo! I'm considered tall in Asia)) crowd to make it onto the subway. I bargained in the same manner with the same storekeepers to collect the same knick knacks as sold on Canal and its extensive side streets.

I was incredibly surprised by this comfort. Spending a summer in Bangkok without much prior exposure to Thai culture has left me feeling scared and excited everyday to live and learn in a new and novel place. But in Hong Kong, I had this visceral reaction- I felt as if I were home. Even the HK buildings were as tall as those in Manhattan.

But, Hong Kong is not New York. For one thing, scaffolding in Hong Kong is made of bamboo, cut on the construction site to fit whatever need there is. Then, there are mountains surrounding the skyline, making it more like LA (which is definitely not NY).

Perhaps though most poignantly for me, Hong Kong is not New York because in Hong Kong, Filipino women congregate by the 100s in the Central area on Sundays, their day off from being a domestic worker for the more affluent of the city. Why Central? Why by the 100s? (1) They don't have much money, (2) they want to see their other Filipina worker friends, and (3) they have no where else to go- so stated matter of factly a Filipina overseas worker living in HK whom Lawrence and I chatted up when we accidentally stumbled upon this Filipino culture in HK. We ran into the HSBC building lobby to avoid the typhoon rains and found literally 100s of Filipinas who were basically picnicking indoors with each other. They brought blankets and cardboard boxes to sit on, playing cards, books, baon (snacks brought from home to satisfy one's own craving throughout the day), and the usual chismis (gossip) to share. In fact, in discussing this topic with a Filipina college friend later that day who has been living in HK, we learned that these gatherings are in a way supported even by the city government; city maintenance workers come and tie up the cardboard boxes every Sunday at 7PM after the Filipinas have left, perhaps saving them for the following week's gathering.

The scene in the HSBC lobby flooded me with mixed feelings. The same manner in which being in Hong Kong elicited a comfort in me, hearing Tagalog all around me did too. From my feeling of comfort with the familiar, however, I soon fell into a state of anger, shame, sadness, guilt, and hopelessness all at once. Hong Kong journalist Chip Tsao recently called the Philippines "a nation of servants" in an article he had written entitled "A War at Home" in the March 27th issue of the popular HK Magazine. In this same article, he even threatened to terminate his employment of a Filipina domestic worker to avoid committing an act of treason "by sponsoring an enemy of the State by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows". Though I've always known and been keenly aware that Filipinos, educated and otherwise, travel abroad to work in all sorts of jobs, I don't think it ever really hit me viscerally, even passionately, until I walked into the HSBC lobby that morning.

With all its familiarity, Hong Kong is no New York. It is not home. It may look like it, smell like it, and feel like it, but it isn't It. (NY will always be my home, for all its greatness and all its flaws.) Like no other place I've ever visited, though, Hong Kong did have the gall to open my eyes to the sad state of the country of my ancestors. So for all the angst I feel against the city for its attitudes, I can really only look towards the Philippines as the reason for the (in my opinion, forced) diaspora of its people and the only hope for ever turning things around for Filipinos in Hong Kong and everywhere.

I Shouldn't Be Writing About This But I Can't Help It... Gyros!

2009-07-15T04:26:00.004-04:00

I realize that I should be blogging about life here in Bangkok. With only three weeks to go here, I'm becoming sentimental about living here, and I'm starting to become nostalgic about it even though I'm still here. It's like I know what I'm about to lose, so I'm savoring every moment as best I can. (This sentimentality seems to be a common theme in my life; it happened at the end of high school, the end of college, the end of my life as a free/real/non-med-school-slave person. Even the end of Dawson's Creek or Felicity or Sex and the City- yikes revealed my guilty pleasures there.)

But as I was about to blog about life here and my travels with Lawrence during our stint here, I was concurrently reading nytimes.com and stumbled upon an article by David Segal about the history of one of my favorite foods/mystery meats, gyros! (And I pronounce it GI-ros (sorry for the terrible phoentic spelling of my pronunciation), as we do in NYC, not YEE-ros, as the rest of world does). And since I haven't had a gyro in so long (since visiting Greek Lady at Penn in Philly last April- so long ago!) and started to salivate as I read the article, I figured I'd pay it a bit of attention here.

The gyro meat cones, it turns out, used to be handmade from left over beef and lamb trimmings by the individual Greek restaurants that served them. They only started to be mass produced Henry-Ford-style in the 1970s, and the idea was birthed by a Mr. Garlic, a brilliant Jewish man whom I would have liked to personally thank for his gyro genius had he still been alive today. (He died in the 1990s.) Unfortunately, neither he nor his family really got to harvest the fruits of his labor and genius; he and his business partner had a falling out, leaving the Garlics out of the mass production of gyro cone meat. His widow's heart still breaks every time she sees a cone of meat in a restaurant. (To draw an analogy to a recent tennis world event, she must feel like Andy Roddick every time he sees Roger Federer across the net, especially after this last, grueling, heartbreaking Wimbledon final loss a couple of weeks ago. Poor Andy = Poor Mrs. Garlic)

Mmm... gyros. I better go eat some street pad thai to take my mind off my favorite mystery meat.

Me in Paradise (aka Maya Bay, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand)

2009-07-01T06:17:00.005-04:00

A one hour flight from Bangkok and a short boat ride gets me here for the weekend. This is me staring up at the larger than life limestone faces that drop in front of me into the aquamarine Andaman Sea. As I contemplate the wonders of nature and the ease with which I arrived in paradise, I realize- I love living in Bangkok.

What Do You Mean This Street is in Phnom Penh?

2009-06-23T10:05:00.006-04:00

This was my reaction, the tone of which I'm sure was not well understood by the Cambodian taxi driver, when he told us that Lawrence's aunt's address was in Phnom Penh. Having just landed in Siem Reap, 6 hours north of Phnom Penh, we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. So much for having a relaxing weekend.

As relatively seasoned travelers, we maneuvered our way into borrowing our cabbie's cell phone to call his aunt, who promptly told us she was confused about why we had asked to stay the night with her in Phnom Penh when we were flying to Siem Reap. Luckily, she had lived in Siem Reap one year ago and directed us towards her good friend's hotel. He took us in as if we were family.

After checking in, we decided that, having made it all the way to Cambodia after three years of trying to visit Lawrence's aunt there, the least we could do was take a bus down to Phnom Penh the next day and actually see her. (As a little bit of background, this is the third year in a row we've tried making it to Cambodia to visit Lawrence's aunt. The first time two years ago, the trip got cancelled because Lawrence's bowel decided to explode into its lumen. The second time last year, we ran out of time- a little thing called med school cut the trip shorter than we would have liked.) We skipped dinner and instead opted to walk around town looking for the one public pay phone that would allow us to call collect to the only open Bangkok Airways office in the world 8PM Cambodia time (in the US of course) to try to reroute our flight back to Bangkok out of Phnom Penh. And of course we were unsuccessful in finding the phone. Luckily, Lawrence had his iPod Touch (thank you Apple) and used the wifi upon our return to the hotel to carry on an email conversation with his mom over a course of 5 hours in order to have our flights rerouted.

The next day, we got up at 4:30 AM (after only 4 hours of sleep) to see Angkor in all its glory at sunrise. With our luck, our hired tuk-tuk driver never showed. The hotel arranged for us to have another guide, but we ended up missing the sunrise by 45 minutes. Bummer, but we proceeded to walk and be tuk-tuked around Angkor (through only 1/2 of the 122 square miles of it) for the next 8 hours, taking a lunch break at 10AM.

The Wats, especially Angkor Wat, were indeed spectacular. They are the definition of awe-some. The carvings and detail of every last free space on the Wats, the heaviness with which the Wats stood, and the resolve the Wats had to withstand nature, the Khmer Rouge, and otherwise really helped shape how in awe I was as I stood in front of the culmination of Khmer culture.

We rushed back to the hotel after a long, hot morning at Angkor to catch our bus to Phnom Penh. The bus is as miserable as would be appropriate for the trip: full of exhaust, equipped with a leaky air conditioner that dripped on Lawrence all 6 hours, and cramped. We finally made it to Phnom Penh, to Lawrence's aunt's apartment, to a fabulous shower, to an expat party, and then to a bed. It had been one of the longest days, maybe ever.

The next day, we walked over to Tuol Sleng, the high school in Phnom Penh that the Khmer Rouge used to detain and torture its "enemies" (local, educated Cambodians) before sending them to killing fields outside of Phnom Penh. It took us 4 hours to get through most of the exhibit. It was so saddening and horrifying that we couldn't finish going through all 4 buildings.

And I can't not mention the food, of course! For lunch after our Tuol Sleng visit, Lawrence and I had some absolutely delicious (though unidentified) meat on a stick with baguettes and pickled salad and coke for a grand total of $2! God I love the dining experience in Asia.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out with Lawrence's aunt, uncle, and expat friends at yet another party before hitting the sack. We woke up early the next morning and successfully returned to Bangkok, after risking our lives (again) in 7 km tuk-tuk ride through Cambodian highway craziness and a bit of negotiating at the airport to let us onto our rerouted flight.

Champagne or Green Tea?

2009-06-17T02:53:00.001-04:00

These were the first words uttered to Lawrence and me as we sat down in our business class seats on the second leg of our flight from Dulles to Tokyo. All Nippon Airlines (ANA) had overbooked their flight, and I must have just smiled the right way at the desk attendant to get him to choose Lawrence and me for the upgrade.

And let me tell you, business class rocks! We boozed up (screwdrivers!) and were able to repose completely flatly across our seat/bed/massage chair. We had menus to choose delicious foods from and movies/music/TV/games on demand. We were loungin’. In fact, we were enjoying ourselves so much that we were actually sad to leave the plane.

And we were even sadder on the last leg of our flight from Tokyo to Bangkok when we returned to coach. Hitting my head on the seat in front of me as I grabbed the pen I so inconveniently dropped as I filled out the disembarking papers hurt that much more.

My Thai co-workers arranged for a driver to pick Lawrence and me up from the airport. That was particularly convenient because 1) we didn’t know how to get to our apartment and 2) it was 1AM and we were pooped. This was perhaps my least stressful departure from a foreign airport I’ve ever had. (No trying to sleep in the airport and then proceeding to get kicked out or haggling for a ride to town and a hotel room.)

We arrived at our place to find perhaps the nicest apartment Lawrence and I will have lived in so far. Ample shelving, two balconies, and even air conditioning! We unpacked and just savored our new place. We felt rested, relaxed. We are ready for our summer in Bangkok! More to come as life happens here.

We Are All Doomed

2009-05-27T16:28:00.002-04:00

"There is no escape: It seems that everything one does to earn a livelihood, to subsist, or to enjoy life turns out to be illegal, immoral, or fattening, or - most disturbing - possibly oncogenic."

- from page 183 of Robbins Basic Pathology, my textbook of choice for the last 10 weeks

To be Validated by a Harvard Med School Professor

2009-05-27T14:46:00.004-04:00

is just so gratifying. Yesterday, during an "Introduction to Neoplasia" lecture, a professor likened normal cell growth to the general outlay of Manhattan and malignant cell growth to the outlay of Boston. Finally, after 4 long years in this city, I've been able to find someone who expressed my last 4 years of angst in one slide.

Perspective

2009-04-12T18:50:00.003-04:00

Timed online Scrabble has become my new form of relaxation. It's a quick way for me to take a break from studying. I love long, drawn out, try for the 7-letter bingo Scrabble I used to play on my Deluxe (that's right DELUXE) Scrabble set with Lawrence. One day, I will be able to play marathon Scrabble again! (welcome to my exciting life as a first year med student.)

Spring Break Part II

2009-03-18T15:02:00.002-04:00

Jury duty!

Filing taxes!

Four hours of UN Security Training!

I'm on the edge of my seat, eager to find what else is in store!

Spring Break!

2009-03-15T21:45:00.001-04:00

Doing laundry never felt so good.

Someone Hearts NY More/Has More Time to Express NY Love Creatively

2009-02-03T04:31:00.006-05:00

I wish I could pay homage to NY the way this fellow has. (See it here in the NYTimes.) Though I guess looking through these pictures and being jealous about how to express NY love could be better spent expressing NY love myself, in my own way. Maybe blogging about it at 4:33AM instead of studying for pulmonology (like I woke up to do) is as good as it gets.

A New Semester

2009-02-03T04:03:00.012-05:00

Half done with the first year. Crazy. Three years ago, I would have never imagined I'd be in medical school. Two years ago I wasn't sure I'd get into a medical school. One year ago, I never thought I'd get into this medical school. But here I am. Half done with the first year.

Reflecting on the first half of first year, I come to realize that I've grown a lot more than I expected. I've learned that I'll never learn everything. I've become a sort of "non-civilian" with my intimate knowledge of the human body via scalpel, forceps, and gloved hand. I've questioned the very validity of the profession I'm about to enter- what place it has in the world right now, and what place it should have in the world right now. And I've doubted at times whether I belong here at all- at medical school, at Harvard.

Going forward, I'll still try to learn as much as I can; even though I know the fight to learn it all is futile, what I will learn (and hopefully retain) will inform my practice of medicine in the future. I'll continue my quest into "non-civilian" status as I delve further into patients' lives with prodding questions, expecting the most intimate of answers from a total stranger. I'll continue to question medicine's role in society in a critical way, but with the hopes of making it more accountable to its ultimate stakeholders, patients. And as medical school becomes ever more intense, I won't have time to doubt whether I belong here. I simply won't have time for anything other than school. Period.

And now, having transformed so much already, I expect to continue to grow in ways I can't even fathom. I know at times it'll be painful. And at times I'll want to quit. But even after all of the growing pains I've experienced in my first 6 months of medical school, and after (slowly) starting to understanding what sort of life I can expect to lead going forward, I am ready. I am answering yes to my (masochistic) calling to be in medicine. For better or for worse. In sickness and health. For as long as I live. I do.

My Second Love

2008-12-03T16:12:00.007-05:00

Lawrence is my first love. Coffee is my second.

I'm obviously not the only coffee lover in the world, but I'm probably among the least sophisticated of the group. Christoph Niemann gets to tell his coffee love story on an NYTimes.com blog site through coffee-on-napkin art (from which I stoke the picture above). I humbly share with you my much simpler and simply-presented coffee love story.

Every morning, I make the coffee for Lawrence and me. I grind the beans til they are not too big anymore, but not too small either. Sometimes I feel I have a sixth sense for just the right amount of grinding to maximize the flavor from the beans. I set the drip (eek! don't judge) coffee maker to go and after 10 minutes, my Mr. Coffee, beeps telling me the coffee's ready. The pot's full of brew and I love the way its aroma fills our whole apartment.

I then briskly walk the 3/10 of a mile from my apartment to the bus stop (since I'm almost always running late), green travel coffee mug in hand. On autumn and winter mornings, I like feeling the warmth of the coffee mug against my cold, dry hands. It reminds me that I have the prize of the first sip once I get on the M2 shuttle to school.

That first sip that I take from my green travel mug is perhaps my most peaceful and favorite part of the day. Just as the bus is crossing the Mass Ave bridge, I usually peer out the left, long window. I see the morning sun just creeping up over the Boston skyline. And I take that first sip. It warms my mouth, then my throat, and then the whole way down my esophagus before it enters my stomach. I am enlivened. I'm ready to go for the day.

The Second Leg

2008-09-27T17:53:00.003-04:00

I'm in medical school. I'm actually in medical school. It's been such a long road, such a struggle to get here. But I'm here. I'm actually here. And I'm loving it. It's not easy, but I'm loving it.

It hasn't been easy getting here, and it's somehow been just as hard now that I am here. I guess I can equate it to being in a really long triathlon. It is as if I've just finished the first really long leg. I struggled to get through, and I want to cry at the end of the leg out of joy and pain. But I make it. Then I realize there are two more incredibly lengthy and equally as tough legs to get through before the end. So I take a deep breath, put my head down, and start chugging again.

Lawrence! Science! Lawrence in Science!

2008-05-28T00:00:00.002-04:00

Yay Lawrence! Yay science! Yay Science!

Lawrence in Science

Lawrence in Science in MIT news

On the Go

2008-05-24T13:10:00.002-04:00

I've been too busy to post here lately. I've been making plans, breaking plans, following plans, and ignoring plans. I've been flying and running and pondering and writing. I've been excited and stressed and sad and nervous. I've been on the go- constantly taking it all in, but moving on before I have time to make sense of any of it. It's like I've been riding on a Japanese bullet train, covering so much distance in so little time but only really seeing and feeling the blur of it all as I'm drawn to the next destination, quickly.

I've been saying lately that Life keeps happening to me, but in reality I think I've been the instigator.

Goodbye March, Hello Medical School

2008-03-31T18:15:00.003-04:00

It's funny how quickly life seems to move when you're not waiting for anything. At the beginning of March, I never thought I'd get through this month. Just about all of the schools I was expecting to hear from planned to release their decisions in March. After almost two years of working towards going to medical school and 4 months of continuous traveling for med school interviews around the country, I was finally going to learn of my medical school fate this March.

I've been extremely lucky in having received so much good news this month, and now I can't believe it's all over. March just flew by so quickly and the hype, the anticipation, and the chase are all over. Part of me is just relieved to now know where I'll be in a few short months, but another part of me is sort of sad that the process is over. Though it was certainly trying and tiring, it was also exciting (and almost fun) to imagine myself attending the various schools I interviewed at, to get to know schools and students across the country, and to just travel. And I can only say that because I've been relatively successful this interview season. I know there are others still waiting for an acceptance at all or have already resigned themselves to just reapplying, and this process for them is hell, at best.

But for me, it's another experience I can tuck away and look back on one day, maybe even fondly. I'll surely be reliving this interview season again in 4 short years, when I apply for residency positions, and I can only hope to be as lucky as I am now. But in the meantime, between these two interview seasons, I get to start the next chapter of my life, in San Francisco, at my most ideal medical school. :)

California, California Here I Come

2008-03-25T15:38:00.005-04:00

My post-bac year was rough. I was working at the Joslin Diabetes Center in the mornings and taking Biology, Physics, and Organic Chemistry at night. My only night off from class during the week was Fridays, but every other Friday night, I had to sleep early to get up for Saturday morning Organic Chemistry lab. Most days, I'd only see Lawrence awake at 10PM, after I returned from class and he from lab. We'd finally start making dinner together then. Tired, but happy to see each other, we'd labor over the food on the stove and the dishes in the sink, listening to music. We kept telling each other this would all be worth it. I was going to make it to medical school next year.

Every night, I'd turn to the fridge to get the onions or garlic or soy sauce, and I'd see this random postcard my co-worker had sent me that I hung on the fridge door. On it was an aerial view of the Bay Area, taken from the Pacific Ocean. From a distance, you could see the Golden Gate Bridge connecting Marin County to San Francisco. The water you were over continued under the Golden Gate Bridge and into the distance, where you could see East Bay and the Bay Bridge. I felt calm looking at the sunny landscape on that postcard.

As I would start to chop the garlic or add the soy sauce to the wok, I would dream of making it out to the city on the postcard, and to that most ideal medical school in that city. But I was an out-of-state candidate who probably didn't stand a chance. I would sigh, and Lawrence would know exactly what had gone through my mind. He'd play the cheesy song "California" by Phantom Planet (the theme song of the TV series "The OC"), and tell me that if I made it into UCSF, we could play this song as we crossed the state line into California, lugging in our car all our stuff with us to start our new life in San Francisco. We'd then sing the lyrics at the top of our lungs, almost as prayer to help us make it out there.

Yesterday, one and a half years later, Lawrence played the song again in the early afternoon. But this time, we sang with it in celebration. And instead of my usual onion chopping while I belted the song's lyrics, I danced around the apartment, holding my acceptance letter over my head with both hands, like a trophy.

Thank You, Tilly and the Wall

2008-03-23T17:06:00.004-04:00

For the second Saturday night in a row, Lawrence and I were at the Middle East in Central Square for a concert last night. Last weekend, we saw The Mountain Goats. Although they were pretty amazing live, I wasn't too familiar with their songs. So I didn't find myself jumping up and down and singing along as I usually do. Last night, we saw Tilly and the Wall. Though I am only familiar with their 2004 album, the fact that I knew 1/2 of their songs they played made the experience that much more enjoyable for me than The Mountain Goats concert the previous Saturday.

The band was very energetic. They released balloons into the small crowd for tossing around, and I think that got the energy level up in the venue before they even got on stage. All the band members were in bright clothing and jumping around. There were seven people on stage, but perhaps most notable was the tap dancer dressed in a purple tutu keeping the beat for the band! There was also of course a drummer, but he, I think, was outshone by the tap dancer- she was on an elevated platform behind the rest of the band members and next to the drummer. High above the stage, her figure reminded me of the crucifix one sees at the front of Catholic churches by the altar; she stood above the rest in a royal purple, usually with her arms held in a hung fashion as sweat dripped from her face during her constant bouncing up and down from tap dancing, as if trying to breathe. (How's that for Easter imagery!)

One moment of the night was particularly memorable. Lawrence, 3 friends, and I were standing on an elevated part of the floor to the left of the stage that ran along the venue's length back. We were all in the back, but right on the edge of this elevated floor so we had a good view of the rest of the crowd and the band. About 3/4 way through the set, the band gets through their song "Nights of the Living Dead", which ironically (and of course intended by the songwriter) ends with a line "And I feel so alive" repeated several times. The band and crowd's energy reached a crescendo when "And I feel so alive" blasted from the speakers and filled the room. Everyone was jumping around, into, over, and under each other on the main floor. The main singer bounced up and down with the beat. She wore a rainbow colored frilly shirt, where the frills were neon layers of the material girls used in to 80s to make friendship bracelets or tie their hair with, and each layer was a color of the rainbow. With each jump, her frills would rise and fall with her. And while the crowd was jumping, all their arms were raised and moved back and forth in sync with the main singer's jumping.

Watching this all from the back of the venue, not to be cliched, but I literally just felt so alive. I could feel the life in me and all around me. I couldn't have been hit harder over the head with this feeling as I literally was singing along "And I feel so alive", jumping up and down, and just taking it all in.

COLUMBIA!

2008-03-04T13:12:00.001-05:00

I can't believe I got in!

GIANTS!!!!!

2008-02-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

I can't believe they've actually won the Super Bowl, and of course in their usual heart-wrenching, down to the wire style. Manning's 3rd and 5 play to Tyree nearly killed me!

This win was much more than just a Super Bowl win for the Giants. They were the underdogs who started the season 0-2, who barely made the playoffs, who were not expected to win against any of their playoff foes, who were expected to lose to the Pats by at least two touchdowns, and who spoiled New England's potentially perfect season, erasing the possibility of a Boston triple crown (baseball, basketball, football) this year. What an accomplishment! Leave it to New York to ruin it for Boston. :)

I Can't Help But Dance When I Hear Daft Punk

2008-02-03T15:31:00.001-05:00

It's about 3:30, T-2.5 hours before our beloved Giants take on the Pats in the Super Bowl. As Lawrence and I have been preparing for hosting our continuously growing informal Super Bowl get together, we've decided to pump up the techno trash and dance around while we make the chili and clean the house. We can't seem to figure out how or why we love this music so much, but I know I can't stop guido-fist-pumping to Cascada. No one native to New England seems to understand this music; "One More Time" by Daft Punk played on the Kiss108 morning show during work one day, and as I was getting up to dance around the office, several of my coworkers ask if this was a new song! Blasphemy!

Lawrence reasons that during our formative years, KTU, the NY dance music radio station, was established in NY. Perhaps that was what spawned our love of this music that others around the country do not seem to share. I think though that the creation of KTU is only a manifestation of the greater reason for our love of this music- it's only in NY that this music was ever popular (in the US), and in fact is still popular today. Who else but your average NY teenager is familiar with the new songs from Cascada and blasts her music in the car, guido-fist-pumping all the while? Where else but NY is "One More Time" by Daft Punk remixed with quotes from Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin to get the city pumped about the Super Bowl? (Yes, I too thought it was the most bizarre yet inspiring remix as I heard it for the first time on z100 while driving to my SUNY- Downstate interview in Brooklyn from Staten Island.) Lawrence and I grew up in a special place that has clearly left its mark on us in many ways. :)

Go Giants!

Another One Bites the Dust

2008-01-03T17:13:00.000-05:00

Little Limpy passed away today. The only male of Pumpkin's second litter, he probably bled to death from his mortal wounds.

I was attempting to introduce him to our male tank so we could consolidate all the male gerbils. Unfortunately, I was unaware that the first rule in gerbil introductions is to NEVER introduce a lone gerbil into an already established clan. Limpy survived the first two days in the tank, seemingly unscathed. One of the gerbils kept chasing him around, but I thought it was just part of establishing the hierarchy in the tank. One of the other gerbils was already grooming him, which is a sign of acceptance, so I thought all was going well.

I should have known something was wrong though when I saw Limpy high atop the large tunnel tube in the tank two days ago. The way he was positioned, he reminded me of a lifeguard on the look out to save anyone in danger. Instead, I later realized, he was lifeguarding his own life and trying to keep trouble at bay. Still, I thought it was all part of the pecking order establishment.

It wasn't until yesterday morning that I finally understood that Limpy's life was in danger. As usual, I woke up at 6:40AM to get ready for work. I fed the gerbils and left the room for just 5 minutes to change into my scrubs. Upon my return to the room to pack my bag for the day, I saw Limpy again perched on the tube. This time, he was bleeding profusely. His tail had several bite marks, one of which was the size of a bug bite on a human, and his back and a huge gash. I immediately transferred him back to the thank with his sisters and mom, who surprisingly took to caring for him instantly upon their first sniff of him. I felt absolutely guilty for what I had done to him.

I returned from work that day and studied in the study, where the gerbils live, all afternoon and evening. I kept watch of Limpy, whose condition seemed to worsen by the hour. His wounds still looked fresh over 12 hours later. He had a slight limp and absolutely no energy, whereas he's usually jumping around and trying to squiggle out of my hands. Since I hadn't named him yet, I appropriately named him "Limpy" at that point, hoping that the name would only be a distant reminder one day of the attacked he survived. When I left the study last night to go to bed, I saw his family surround him, keeping him warm as he was sleeping. He finally looked at ease.

This morning while I was feeding the gerbils again, I noticed his limp had gotten significantly worse. He didn't want to move and wouldn't open his eyes. He was dying. When I returned home from work, I anxiously ran into the study to check on Limpy. I found his little head sticking out from under the food bowl. I petted his stiff, cold forehead. He had passed, and his family had buried him. I made a little casket for him out of a tissue box and placed him in it. Before I let him go, I examined his body to assess his fatal injuries. The gash on his back was actually a gaping hole into his body. The large bite on his tail looked infected- it was covered in a yellowish puss. And worst of all, one of his feet was split in half about halfway between his ankle and toes; it was only still attached by his fur. I can't even fathom the severity of the pain he endured this last day.

I am torn up about my hastiness to just introduce him to the male tank without having first researched the proper way to do so. I caused his death.

The only silver lining to this terrible episode is the insight I have gained into gerbil behavior and subsequently the even deeper respect I have for animal intelligence.

I have learned that gerbils are territorial. Once a clan hierarchy is established, there is no altering it by a visitor.

I have learned that gerbils have longer term memories than I first thought they had. Little Limpy was immediately welcomed back into his home tank in spite of being away for two days. I was under the impression that their most distant memory was from only a few hours prior.

I have learned that gerbils are aware of death, at least to some degree. I found the lifeless Limpy lying under the food bowl and covered, almost neatly, by bedding. And before I took him out of the tank, I watched his family members come to his head one by one and try to groom it. It was as if they were paying their respects. A few hours later, I placed a little box in their cage for them to chew on and only his 4 sisters ran out of their nest to examine it. I didn't see his mom anywhere. After a couple of minutes of waiting for her appearance, I checked their little nest to she if was hiding; she wasn't there. As I started to dig through the bedding a little bit looking for her, her head peaked up from under a large pile of bedding on the complete opposite side of the tank from the nest, almost exactly at the spot where Limpy was buried. I'm not sure how coincidental it was that her hideout was so close to where Limpy last lay. In the year that I've had Pumpkin, though, I've never seen her bury herself in solitude. Perhaps I'm crazy and reading into this too much, but it seemed like she just wanted to be alone and mourn the death of her son.

C'est la vie.

The Funny Things That Happen When It Snows

2007-12-14T10:09:00.001-05:00

Lawrence walked into the house yesterday after 3 inches of snow and, like a little boy, started jumping up and down exclaiming, "Let's go out and play!!!" Excited, I ran outside and played frisbee with Lawrence in the snow-blanketed park across the street from our house. Unbeknownest to us, part of the grass was covered by a layer of ice upon which the snow then sat. I of course slipped on the ice as I was dancing around and landed on my shoulder. Lawrence, who didn't see the incident, came over to laugh at me for falling. But he didn't realize that there was ice all around me and slipped onto his back as well as he was still laughing at me. Serves him right. :)

While I enjoyed what I considered an idyllic snowfall yesterday, the rest of the city was stuck in their cars trying to get home. The city of Boston closed down at 2PM yesterday, causing the largest traffic jam EVER.

My poor coworker took 10 hours to get home, usually just a 1.5 hour trip. It took her 7 hours to get to a part of town that would usually take her 20 minutes. Another coworker made it in home in 5 hours instead of the usual hour it takes her. A third coworker tried to wait out the traffic in a nearby restaurant. She watched the traffic outside the restaurant move about 15 feet in two hours. The roads were so crowded that there was no where to even turn around and rest.

Another coworker was on the road so long that she actually ran out of gas. She was lucky enough to have a plastic gas container in her trunk. She walked to the nearest gas station where she got on a line of people, not cars, at the pumps waiting to fill their red containers too. Even with the refill, she almost did not make it home on the second tank of gas. The 3 lane highway she takes home narrowed down to just one. One lane was blocked with snow. The other lane was a parking lot of abandoned cars that either ran out of gas or were too low to the ground to be able to make it over the snow on the road. Her car crawled the entire trip home.

While the snow made most regret having driven into work yesterday, it made one man regret not following his dream. My shuttle driver on the ride home revealed to me yesterday that his dream was to own a plow.

I could have cleaned up these streets or driveways and made so much cash. Who would want to be out today while a foot of snow will be falling? ME. I could be raking it in. I could have been like Homer Simpson. (singing) Call on me; I'm Mr. Plow.

It's funny what snow can do to a town.

Snow!

2007-12-13T14:03:00.000-05:00

The first big snowfall in Boston this winter has just started. We're expecting 8-11 inches today and another foot or so on Sunday. My getting-out-of-the-house inertia increases by several orders of magnitude every time the skies precipitate, and the coming days' copious snowfall has already pushed my inertia to infinity. I'm looking forward to watching movies, drinking lots of hot chocolate, and most importantly playing in the snow! In fact, Lawrence has just gotten home from lab early and already wants to frolic through the two inches of snow that have already fallen. The excitement of the first snowfall reminds me why I love living through the four seasons of the Northeast.

Mood Swing

2007-12-12T15:38:00.000-05:00

I was suddenly overcome with a deep sadness as I was sitting in bed typing up a med school interview thank you note and listening to Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos' slow, mellow songs. I lost my motivation to go for a run, finish my biochem lecture review from last week, or even continue composing the thank you note. I'm not really sure what's come over me. I've been preoccupied with several concerns lately; I feel as though I've subconsciously decided to let them weigh on me all at once, and this has manifested in my conscious desire to do nothing. I just want to lie warmly in bed, listen to music, and veg.

!!!

2007-11-26T00:49:00.001-05:00

Guess who's going to med school next year?!?!? :-D

An Extra Delightful Friday Morning at Work

2007-10-19T08:47:00.000-04:00

Free breakfast makes me happy. Especially when there are bagels, lox, and cream cheese involved. I'm so full that I want to go back to sleep. :)

Sigh

2007-10-17T22:08:00.000-04:00

After brushing my teeth one early weekday morning, I walk back into our bedroom to find Lawrence half awake. He's standing at his set of drawers, squinting at his open underwear drawer and seemingly confused about why he opened it in the first place. Hearing me enter the room, he turns to me and smiles his big, toothy smile with his eyes still squinted. I couldn't help but smile at his endearing wake up routine.

Immediately, however, I was saddened by the fact that I may not be living with him next year, depending on where I end up in medical school. I'll miss these small moments that only surface when we live our everyday lives together.

Morning Light

2007-10-13T09:37:00.000-04:00

I love weekends. I get to see things in a different light, literally. I woke up this morning around 9AM and walked into our kitchen, which had light so bright it was nearly blinding. Since I'm only really home early in the mornings and late at night, I usually see our whole apartment, including the kitchen, in dim light. What magnificent morning light our eastern facing kitchen window sees. No wonder our hanging vine plant in the kitchen is growing uncontrollably.

Med School Interview Anxiety

2007-10-12T08:50:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, I submitted my final secondary application. Enter stage right: the interview waiting game.

I've been lucky so far in that I haven't received outright rejections. And in fact, I quickly was offered my first interview only two weeks after I completed one of my applications. Still, I can't help but constantly refresh my email and check the status pages of my applications online every few hours to learn if any medical schools have made any decisions about offering me interviews. (Just this second, the little number next to "Inbox" on my gmail tab turned from 7 to 8, indicating I had received an email. I quickly jumped to my gmail window only to see an email from Delta Airlines about my October miles statement. Ugh.)

Considering most of my applications were only complete in early-mid-September, I should not expect to hear from medical schools for a while. Plus, an even more anxiety-ridden time will soon rear its ugly head, the acceptance/waitlist/rejection waiting game, that I probably will dread even more. I guess what I'm really waiting for is my first acceptance to reassure me that all my hard work last year and this year is not for naught. I am unsettled with my currently undetermined future- I don't even know what city I will be in next year or if I'll even be in medical school at all.

All I can do now is wait.

The Arcade Fire Never Disappoints

2007-10-02T23:08:00.000-04:00

What is it about the Arcade Fire's music that makes me feel so alive every time I listen to it? Perhaps it's their creative use of a wide array of instruments. Maybe it is their poetic lyrics, mostly in English but occasionally in French. It could be the way Wynn's and Regine's voices play off each other. Or the way their music sounds so organic, taking these unexpected melodic turns that audaciously defy the pop song formula.

Or it could be that every time I hear Wake Up, I can close my eyes and picture myself standing next to Wynn on the stage as I belt out the lyrics at the top of my lungs. :) Nothing will ever top that May 8th concert at the United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights. (See Lawrence's blog post here if you didn't catch that reference. :) )

A Sad Realization

2007-10-01T22:34:00.000-04:00

My favorite time of day is the short time between getting into bed and falling asleep. I know that for the next 4-8 hours, depending on my schedule, I can just rest- no applications, experiments, or problem sets. Isn't it sad that every morning I wake up looking forward to the end of the day and not the living I get to do during it?

I think I need to reevaluate how I spend my time.

Gerbil Babies!

2007-09-15T08:30:00.000-04:00

On September 13, 2007, Pretzels and Pumpkin welcomed five gerbil pups into the world! The two new parents have been nicely sharing the duty of sitting on the litter to keep them warm since the 5 little ones are currently red and hairless.

When I went to feed the gerbils on the morning of September 13th, I saw 5 red, squirming things in a corner of the tank. My first thought was, "Eww, what is that ?" (Great maternal instincts, I know.) But immediately I realized that Pumpkin had given birth, and at 7:00AM, I woke Lawrence up telling him the good news. He was not as thrilled, seeing as how he was on hour 4 of sleep when I woke him up, but he appeased me and came to the study to look at the new pups anyway. He was more excited about the pups that afternoon though, after he had a full night's rest.

The pups are doing well, and I'll be posting pictures soon!

Honduras Day 1

2007-09-13T00:14:00.000-04:00

I still have a number of secondaries to complete, but I wanted to start blogging about Honduras before I forget the details of the craziness. So I'm going to post here from day-to-day a day-by-day run down of the trip.

Day 1 (August 21)
After a 4 hour flight delay from LaGuardia in Queens, we arrive in San Pedro Sula, Honduras at 11PM. With no hotel reservations and barely $50 worth of Honduran currency (the lempira), we attempt to hide in the airport and sleep there since we are planning to catch a bus out of town at 8:30 AM. We aren't in the mood to spend money on a room we'd barely sleep in, but the Honduran customs guards quickly convince us otherwise.

Forced to leave the airport, we tell a taxi driver to take us to the first hostel that was listed in our guidebook. During the 10km ride to the hostel, we learn that San Pedro Sula "es muy peligroso" and that people get killed wandering around at night over small things like money or jewelry. We arrive at the hostel essentially praying for a room, and the old woman who unlocks the heavily locked gate to the hostel assures us she has room for us.

She leads us up the stairs of this bohemian hostel that is falling over itself in original paintings. She loudly knocks on the door of a dorm, to which a half naked and infuriated British woman angrily responds. There is a miscommunication between the two, mostly because the hostess speaks only Spanish while the British woman speaks only English. Apparently, the bed the hostess thought was available for Lawrence and me was actually occupied by the Brit's friend who was still out partying. The hostess was not made aware of the Brit's friend staying in the room when she started her shift a couple of hours earlier. After 45 minutes of back and forth and dragging a bilingual hostel guest into the mix to try to straighten things out, the hostess finally understands the situation and proceeds to tell us there was no room at the inn.

With the dangerous streets of San Pedro Sula at 1:00AM and not another hostel in sight, Lawrence and I have no plan B. Luckily, the hostess understands our situation and allows us to sleep on the floor of the dining room/reception area for $5 each. Thankful, we set up our Thermarests under the dining room table and try to go to sleep. But it's tough to do in 90 degree weather and 90% humidity with the creepy paintings on the wall and the cockroaches crawling on the floor and the drunken twenty-somethings traipsing back from a wild night out every fifteen minutes. Exhausted, I finally manage to fall asleep, but poor Lawrence stays up. He hates cockroaches and is afraid we'll be taken advantage of with our passports/gear out in the open as we helplessly sleep under a dining room table. He drifts in and out of sleep until daylight with his knife in hand, ready to attack.

Back from Honduras

2007-09-02T21:32:00.000-04:00

and with many adventures to recount, I'll hopefully be blogging about it soon. Sadly, I need to focus on medical school secondary applications for the moment, some of which have deadlines in the next couple of days. But to share a tidbit of what the trip was like, let's just say that I love being back and having roads made of something other than sand, potable tap water, and not one cockroach or mosquito crawling over me in the night.

R.I.P. Nice One and Peanut

2007-08-13T09:44:00.000-04:00

Two gerbils died on Saturday. :( Nice One was my favorite girl gerbil and Peanut was the new male we acquired just this week.

Lawrence and I picked up a male gerbil Thursday night to breed with the most docile and friendly of the 4 gerbil sisters we already had. Since the gerbils needed to be introduced slowly (i.e. they shared a cage but were divided by a barrier so they could get used to each other's scents) and we had only one water bottle for the two of them, we took them with us on our trip to NY this weekend so we could switch the gerbils from from one side of the cage to the other to ease the introduction. Stupidly, we left them in my sister's car over a little under two hours. When she called me to callously tell me that I was a retard for leaving them in the car like that, I was heartbroken. For the rest of the weekend, Lawrence and I recounted the ways in which we could have avoided their deaths.

Ironically, they died because we were trying to extend their lineage; when they did pass one day, it'd be easier to take since their offspring would still be around. They will certainly be missed.

The Reemergence of Cliques - Fat People Versus Thin People

2007-07-26T08:24:00.001-04:00

A study claims that obesity is essentially contagious, according to an article in the NY Times yesterday. People who have obese friends are 57% more likely to become obese themselves. The solution "to avoid becoming fat" according to the Times article's author, Gina Kolata, may be "to avoid having fat friends." Even one of the study's principal investigators suggests making "friends with a thin person... and let the thin person's behavior influence you and your obese friend."

Looks to me like this is the start of a great divide. If people follow the advice to avoid being friends with fat people, high school-type cliques will reemerge as a form of social demarcation, but on a worldwide scale. I think that would be hilarious. Imagine the pranks the groups would play on one another? It would be like high school all over again. It could even turn into an epic war, where thin people are constantly trying to outrun their fatter counterparts to tire them out, and the obese are trying to catch up and sit on the thin to squash them. It would be like one giant game of cat and mouse between the two biggest cliques in the world!

Ahh, the things I think of at work to distract myself from the tedium of data entry. :)

A New Number, A Lost Piece of the Past

2007-07-23T16:59:00.000-04:00

My mom had to change our home phone number. With the continuing collapse of SunRocket, her VoIP provider, she felt the need to switch immediately. Had she waited 10 days, she would have been able to transfer her SunRocket number to her new provider. But she felt she needed a land line immediately, so she took a new number.

This may seem a bit over the top, but I tried to convince her to wait the ten days to keep the old number. She has a cell phone, and if you plug in a phone into any phone jack, you can call 911 whether or not you pay for land line service; she could afford to wait. She seemed confused by my last minute plea and asked, "are you stressed about your MCAT scores or something?"

My mom didn't understand my attachment to the old number; to be honest, it surprised me as well. I didn't think I'd be so attached to 7 digits, but I associate those 7 digits with home, with my childhood and adolescence. We've had that number almost the entire 21 years we've lived at that house- I think my dad in fact picked that number out personally. My friends would dial that number to speak to me on the phone for hours. I anxiously awaited boys' phone calls in high school, hoping they would dial that number. It's still one of the only numbers I have committed to memory. I feel I've somehow lost a little bit of the past by losing that number.

Lamest Summer Ever

2007-07-15T22:37:00.001-04:00

This weekend was a much-needed reminder of what study-free summer weekends are like. Lawrence and I held a successful garage sale, ran errands, and watched a couple movies. It was nice. :) Having just finished the MCAT on Friday (may I NEVER take them again), this is the first weekend in a while that I've not had those cursed Examkrackers MCAT prep books propped open. I have about 30 days until I receive the results. Wish me luck.

Sadly, Lawrence is still recovering from his colonoscopy complications. He in fact started bleeding again about 12 hours before I had to take my MCAT. The poor thing kept passing blood throughout the night, but let me have a good night's sleep for my big exam. Any other night, he would have awoken me at midnight, when the bleeding reached its peak, to run to the ER. Instead he went to sleep hoping he wouldn't lose too much blood in the night so that I could take the MCAT with only the MCAT on my mind. Now that's love.

This really has been the lamest summer ever. I've spent most of it studying for the MCAT, and with the trip being canceled, I'll spend all of it in LAME-O Boston. Lawrence has been sick (shingles and internal bleeding) and stressed (quals were two weeks ago) all summer. I hope August has better things in store for us than June and July have had.

T - 36 Hours

2007-07-11T21:43:00.000-04:00

36 hours to go before my MCAT! I'm so nervous. I hope do well. :-/ The focus of my last six weeks of studying has been this exam, so I better darn well only have to take it once.

I thought my MCAT and our trip big backpacking trip would be the biggest events of July, but Lawrence's colonoscopy complications definitely take the cake. Click on the link for Lawrence's witty commentary on the past week's events. Let's just say I'm glad he didn't bleed to death.

Though happily Lawrence managed to survive without a hitch thus far ::knockonwood::, sadly we had to cancel our big trip to Los Angeles/Thailand/Cambodia/Burma. This trip has been the only thing that's kept us sane since the beginning of the spring semester. Initially we were planning on traveling to the Philippines in January, but I unexpectedly landed a job that was important for my medical school application- I couldn't get away. With my tough spring semester and MCAT and his PhD quals, we were just hoping to make it to Asia in one piece. We were looking forward to being relatively worry/stress-free for three short weeks.

More importantly though, of course, I'm extremely happy that Lawrence is on his way to a successful recovery and that I can spend the next couple weeks ensuring his rip-roaring return to his adventurous self.

But for the next 36 hours, I need to think positive thoughts for the MCAT. Tomorrow will be my day of zen. I plan on running, doing some yoga, and eating plenty of brain food. Wish me luck!

Bikes!

2007-06-10T20:16:00.000-04:00

I've been getting a bit burned out from all this MCAT studying. Most girls would go shopping for new clothes or a new purse. I drove with Lawrence 45 minutes south to Stoughton to acquire bike #4. I now have 4 bikes- my purple commuter bike mysteriously named Caliente by Schwinn, my 1970s Amsterdam-style Free Spirit red cruiser, my speedy Trek road bike, and an Iron Horse mountain bike.

Oddly enough, I ride my $55, craigslist-bought Caliente almost exclusively and leave the other much more expensive bikes sitting pretty. I've only ridden the Trek once and averaged about 22 MPH on it! I can't wait to ride it again, but given that the nice trails are a good drive from Boston and Lawrence and I are bogged down with quals/MCAT this summer, I don't know when that will be. The Iron Horse turns out is a little too big for me. I tried jumping off the seat and straddling the crossbar to test how much it would hurt if I had to stop suddenly, and I started bleeding. But it was such a good deal! A new bike for 25% of its price! Lawrence and I are still trying to finagle a way to trade this one on craigslist or otherwise for a frame the won't make me bleed. And the cruiser has a flat that we have yet to fix.

It seems counterintuitive to spend more money bikes I will hardly use than the bike I use everyday, but with frequent bike theft around Cambridge, I can't risk losing expensive bikes. As a result, Lawrence and I have an apartment full of bikes: 9 total, 7 of which are functional, and only 2 of which are used on a daily basis. 5 are living in the hallway, one in the living room, one in the kitchen, and the two non-functionals on our porch. We have tried to make the bikes a part of the room decor as a temporary fix to the storage situation; my red mountain bike resides in our red kitchen while Lawrence's green and black mountain bike lives in our green and brown themed living room. We're either going to have to convert the porch into a bike garage, live with all the bikes all over the apartment, or move. :)

:)

2007-06-05T12:43:00.000-04:00

Ever have one of those days where everything goes right? The sun is shining that much more brightly. Iced tea is that much more refreshing. Life is just that much sweeter. I wish everyday were like today. :)

The Arcade Fire Rules and Finals Drool

2007-05-14T23:12:00.000-04:00

My finals start tomorrow and end May 23rd- I'll be incommunicado until they're done. One more week of the post-bac madness before the MCAT madness! I take things one step at a time since I don't think I could ever handle this post-bac/pre-mad insanity otherwise.

Still, I like to blog about the goings on in my life so I can look back on it all one day and remember how great or crazy or dull or whatever my life was at one point. With finals, I don't have the time to appropriately blog about the Arcade Fire concert Lawrence, Jesse, Hillary, and I went to last week, but I wanted to post something timely. (It was the most awesome concert I've ever been to, and I think I need to retire from concert-going since next to nothing can top this one.) So here are quick fix #1 and quick fix #2 to my time shortage problem. Thanks for taking the time to write them, Lawrence. :)

My Boyfriend Likes to Knock Me Over and Land on Me

2007-05-07T21:23:00.000-04:00

Lawrence and I were on the South Shore of Boston cycling through Wompatuck State Park on Saturday. There were some cool, old abandoned buildings in the park we had come across after cycling for almost two hours. I think it must have been an old fort or base or school bus parking lot- I couldn't really tell from the decrepit buildings. The amateur photographer that Lawrence is HAD to get my camera that we forgot in the car to take some pictures. So we rode back the two miles to the car to fetch the camera.

On the way back, we crossed some tricky railroad tracks where Lawrence specifically mentioned to be careful. Guess who stumbled across the tracks as we were riding back to the old buildings with the camera?!?! Lawrence's wheel got caught in the tracks that were veering off to the left. He tried to maneuver out of the tracks, but ended up falling to his right and ONTO ME! I cushioned his fall and scraped my right knee and left calf. "The camera is safe!" he first exclaimed, and not, "are you ok?" He then had the audacity to tell me the fall wasn't too bad! He of course went on to document my fall with my camera.

Here are some visuals so you can relive the experience with me.

Approaching the railroad tracks

I'm down!

The aftermath

My Morning Commute

2007-05-05T00:44:00.000-04:00

Every morning I ride my bike a mile to get to the bus stop where a free shuttle takes me to work. During most winter mornings, I wear a ski mask during my commute- it is just too cold to have any skin exposed. With the spring, though, I get to be mask free and my senses are fully exposed to my surroundings.

Most morning commutes in the mask free season involve smelling the magic of fresh Junior Mints as I pass by the Junior Mints factory on the way to work. Who knew Cambridge was once a candy manufacturing mecca? Unfortunately, the Junior Mints factory is the only remnant of that golden candy era in Cambridge. Lucky for me, though, it is up and running, emitting the sweet smell of Junior Mints at 7:30AM as I drowsily trudge to work. I usually arrive at my job at the Joslin Diabetes Center looking for sugar. I love life's little ironies.

Putting Last Week's Events in Perspective

2007-04-26T10:41:00.000-04:00

The Virigina Tech incident last week was certainly sad. Many innocent people were killed by someone who was clearly mentally unstable.

At the same time, however, there was a car explosion in the middle of a market in Iraq that killed over 150 people. That didn't seem to make the news as much that day. What about all the other killings that happen in Iraq on a daily/weekly basis? The media don't make as big of a stink about those either. No one seems to care.

As sad as the VT killings are, I think the country needs to put in perspective what else is going on in the world. Why aren't we more concerned with the unrest in Iraq that we basically brought upon the country? Or what about the people in third world countries who die of infectious diseases for which we have cures or vaccines?

I myself am of course guilty in completely being wrapped up in my own world, and I probably could do more in the service of others, whether to protest the war or gather supplies to send to those who need it more. Still, the events of last week have at least put into perspective for me how centrist Americans can be. At least I have an appreciation of that. Hopefully this realization will inspire me, and anyone else who came to the same realization after last week's events, to be a little less selfish and a little more active.

Almost there

2007-04-26T10:35:00.000-04:00

The sun shines so much more brightly when I don't have an exam. :) I've just finished round II of midterms. Phew!

3 1/2 weeks to go before I finish my post-bac! I'm counting down.

I've Been Egged

2007-04-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

I was running around the park in front of our house today. As I finished my first lap, out of the corner of my eye I noticed some mischievous children paying attention to me. Within a couple of seconds, I was hit, with an egg or two. The three African-American school aged kids who threw the egg ran away, all dressed in stereotypical giant t-shirts and oversized black basketball shoes. I chased after them for a little bit across the park, but I was covered in egg from head to toe, literally, and my arm was bleeding. In the middle of the park is a youth center, so I went in and cleaned up.

To top it all off, I accidentally locked myself out of our apartment right before running, but luckily my landlord was around when I returned to let me back in the apartment. I called Lawrence, who convinced me to file a police report. I didn't even bother to call the police initially- I didn't know they could do anything about kids throwing eggs. I returned to the youth center in hopes of seeing the kids again, and called the cops from there. A very nice police officer showed up and helped me file the report.

Unfortunately I didn't see the kids again and wouldn't be able to identify them by face since I was running and only saw them out of the corner of my eye. Apparently there is a "community relations" department in the Cambridge Police organization that could have organized school related punishments for them, like detention, if I could recognize them. I didn't even know such a thing existed. Though Cambridge has delinquent kids, it has set up a good system to deal with them.

This stinks. Either I did something really awful, or karma's got something great coming my way. Maybe I'll get into a choice med school. :-/

Sorry I've Been a Slacker

2007-04-19T13:41:00.000-04:00

I'll be done with midterms in a week and my semester/post-bac in 5 weeks. Not that I've had much to update on since my last posting, but I'll be back with more on my little life soon enough. Hang tight.

3/4 Done!

2007-04-02T14:39:00.000-04:00

After a refreshing Spring Break of R&R, I'm ready for the last quarter of my premed studies. I can't believe I'll be done in less than two months. :)

I Heart The Decemberists

2007-03-25T16:50:00.000-04:00

As my first act of Spring Break, I went with Lawrence to the two Decemberists concerts at Avalon Friday and Saturday. I absolutely love this band. Their "hyperliterate prog-rock" tugs at my hipster-wannabe heart stings. They are also wonderful performers. Each band member is a character and collectively they have this great dynamic and energy that transcends the crowd. Plus I have a little crush on lead singer Colin Meloy, which Lawrence is ok with since he has a crush on Jenny Conlee.

Originally, Lawrence and I were only supposed to attend the Friday night performance, but I unfortunately fell ill during the concert- I nearly fainted. We had to leave our third row standing spots to step to the side so I could get water and air. This caused us to miss the last two songs of the night, one of which is "The Mariner's Revenge"- one of Lawrence's most favorite songs, ever. We looked for the tickets for the next night's performance, which were surprisingly easy to do given that it was sold out, and we got to see the band perform a new set in addition to Lawrence's favorite song, with whale costumes and "dead" Decemberists band members and all. (Scroll of the bottom of Lawrence's post for the video.) It was amazing. :)

Being American

2007-03-23T11:29:00.000-04:00

While at work a couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to one of our study participants as the new clinical research assistant.

Nurse: "This is our new research assistant, Christina."
Participant: "Hi, Chris. Is it ok if I call you Chris? We shorten things here in America."

Unbelievable! As our 4 hour visit proceeded, I got to know the participant better and realized the she probably was just trying to make conversation and didn't mean to be derogatory. Nonetheless, she clearly labeled me a foreigner, and ironically she is not Caucasian. I couldn't help but be offended. I was born in this country just as she was, and to be honest, I speak English more eloquently than she does (which, if you read my blog, is really a feat to speak more poorly than I do :) ) and am more educated than she is. I should be just as American as she is, but she clearly didn't see me that way.

Lawrence and I have encountered this quite a bit throughout our young lives. Although this is very offensive to me, I still find that people in this country are much more aware and tolerant of diversity than in other countries. During our World Cup adventure, we encountered many people who couldn't believe that Lawrence and I are American. They would always assume we were supporting Korea. Additionally, we got to talking with a Dutch fellow who thought he was so tolerant since he "knew black people". And he was among the more aware and tolerant of those we met at the World Cup.

Still, racist stereotypes still clearly exist here and abroad. I find that they are least obvious in NY, where no one takes a second look at you- partially out of a fear of being jumped for giving a second look, but more importantly because everyone is used to the diversity.

I think this has contributed to my lack of a real national pride. In this country, I don't feel American- if anything I'm a New Yorker (can you tell from this blog? :) ). Outside of this country, I like to think of myself as American, but no one else seems to believe it. And in the Philippines, I still stick out because I'm considered American.

I believe I'm experiencing what most 1st/2nd generation kids go through when coming to this country. It's an interesting generation-wide phenomenon. It honestly doesn't affect my day to day living all that much, but every once in a while it comes up, like with our participant, and makes me a feel a little lost, like I don't really belong anywhere.

Being Sick

2007-03-16T16:59:00.001-04:00

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and currently feel light-headed and achy all at once. Yuck.

This reminds me of the first time I ever got sick away from home. I was a freshman at Penn, and I thought I was going to die. I just lay in bed with a high fever and wanting my mom. I was miserable. My mom is a pediatrician, so she always took care of my sisters and me when we got sick. Being sick away from home was my first real rude awakening that I had become an adult, that I needed to take care of myself, and that being sick was no longer a day off from life.

Funny how being sick as a kid got me out of my responsibilities. I didn't have to study or attend school or go to soccer practice or go to tennis lessons. It was a mini-vacation, and I LOVED getting sick. Even in college, I had to take care of myself and any case studies or tests that were coming up, but I still had the option of staying in bed all day and vegging. Now, as a pseudo-student/adult, I can't shun my daily responsibilities anymore. I went to work this morning, went grocery shopping (since we haven't gone food shopping in over two weeks!) during the bizzaro blizzard in the middle of March, and am about to start studying soon after I finish this blogpost. Being sick is now just something to work through instead of something to embrace and almost celebrate.

Getting older stinks. I can add this to my long list of reasons why I don't want to grow up. :)

Sitting on the Eurostar

2007-03-03T17:54:00.000-05:00

As I've been cleaning out my old backpacks and bags, I've come across a lot of junk I manage to horde- receipts, clear gum wrappers, pens galore. While most of it is disposable, I did stumble upon a note I wrote to myself as Lawrence and I were ending our World Cup adventure last summer. I thought it worth posting, albeit quite tardy, since it's something I would have written about on my blog if I had access to a computer at that moment.

June 20, 2006

It's funny how easily I've forgotten what it's like to work. Currently sitting on the Eurostar from Brussels to London, I've been reflecting on the past year I spent as a consultant and how my life is about to change drastically with all the schooling I've just committed myself to. I'm excited to go back to school and follow a dream I've had since I was young.

Thoughts on Poetry

2007-03-01T23:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Sonia and I attended a poetry reading this week in Cambridge. We went to listen to Mala, a candidate for a PhD in Chemistry from MIT who writes chemistry poems. She anthropomorphizes atoms, telling of the dramas of nuclear decay and nucleophilic backside attacks. The nerd that I am finds her poems hysterical.

Sonia and I didn't know what we were getting ourselves into with this poetry reading. Mala was hosted by a poetry group, all the members of which are amateur poets who were getting on in age and aspiring to be published. We had to sit through some very serious and not so impressive poetry. We were beginning to wonder if most poetry in general is mediocre and written by people who take themselves too seriously.

Then a published poet, also featured in addition to Mala by the group that evening, presented his poems. His poetry was leaps and bounds beyond those of the amateurs. His descriptions, his word play, and the way in which he was able to invoke emotion among members of the audience was unparalleled that evening, with the exception of Mala of course! Mala read last, after the other featured poet. Her poems seemed to be lost on this writer-type crowd, but Sonia and I managed to laugh out loud.

The man who introduced Mala said that only through her poetry he actually found chemistry fun; after Mala's reading, Sonia commented to Mala and me that only through Mala's use of chemistry in poetry did she actually find poetry fun. :)

After we it was over, Sonia and I both agreed that attending the reading was another interesting life experience that we weren't ready to experience again any time soon. We also discussed how, as the poetry reading proceeded, neither of us were sure if we could tell amateur poets from professional ones. After we heard the published poet, however, we both agreed that there was a big difference between amateurs and professionals. He restored my faith in good writers.

This poetry reading made me realize that true talent does exist (and can do so in many forms) and those who possess it can create beautiful things, whether it be poetry or the perfect football pass. It also made me realize, however, that those who have true talent are few and far between. Though a lot of people have passion, most of what is produced isn't close to noteworthy. As my friend Kristin, who used to work in an art gallery in Southern California, succinctly put it, "there's a lot of crap out there."

Why l Love New York (this trip)

2007-02-17T16:54:00.000-05:00

I love New York. I always have a great time when I come home. My family and closest friends are here, and this is where I grew up.

Every time I become complacent with Boston, I manage to make a trip to NY and remind myself of what I'm missing here. It always makes it that much harder to leave again.

You can get around here 24 hours a day on public transportation that can take you almost anywhere you want to go in the 5 boroughs. You can get whatever kind of food you want anytime of the day. Anything and everything you'd ever want to buy, you can find here. The diversity of the types of people who live here are unparalleled. I could go on and on, but these are all general reasons I can cite with each trip I take here and ones that most people cite about why they love this place. Here are a couple specific examples of what makes New York the great place it is.

1) As we were driving home through Brooklyn yesterday, Lisa found a Russian radio station (87.7) that was playing a mix of Russian trance and Latino dance music. She also found two reggaeton stations. I don't even think 1/2 the people in Boston know what reggaeton is.

2) Lisa, my mom, and I were food shopping in the Chinatown in Brooklyn and saw several people selling fresh, cheap produce out of their vans that were illegally parked on the street. Each person appeared to just focus on two or three items, and there was no dearth of customers at each van. Boston's one Chinatown doesn't even have the open store fronts with fresh produce and fish on display for sale.

3) Everyone here has EZ-Pass, so traffic flows much more smoothly around toll junctions. In Massachusetts, most do not own the state's version of EZ-Pass, Fast Lane. Non-Fast -Laners almost always make the EZ-Pass lanes inaccessible because they either accidentally go there or there are so many of them that they back traffic up far enough so people with EZ-Pass can't get through.

I'm still only 1/2 way through my trip. I'm sure I'll have more little examples I can rattle off on the drive back to Boston tomorrow.

Cold

2007-02-08T15:40:00.000-05:00

I think I'm getting used to the temperature always being below freezing. I remember when this cold spell first started, I would think it was cold when the temperature was in the upper 30s. After our trip to Montreal, where the temperature was, I think, between -4 and -22 degrees fahrenheit, Boston seemed balmy. Now, it's just seems to be a fact of life. I always just wear my long john pants under my regular pants, my warmest (ski) jacket, a ski mask that only has an opening for my eyes (worn when I ride my bike), double layered gloves, and leg warmers I've borrowed from Hillary. I even went running outside today, in even more layers than I usually wear since I wasn't sporting my ski jacket.

I hope my tolerance can last until winter is over. Not minding the cold should make winter pass more quickly. That and the fact that I barely have time to write this blog post, let alone spend leisure time where I'd have to be outside for too long. +1 for my crazy schedule. :)

What I Did During Intersemester Vacation

2007-02-04T09:58:00.000-05:00

During what I thought would be a quiet break during which I could finally relax, read, paint and run, I ended up going to a burlesque show and visiting what some consider to be Canada's city of sin, Montreal.

The burlesque show came about after Lawrence, our neighbor/friend/Lawrence's lab mate Jesse, and I browsed the neighborhood for quiz nights on a Wednesday before settling for old reliable at The Druid. The 3 of us are usually helpless by ourselves at quiz night, but we managed to snatch second place, which garnered us the prize of a pair of tickets to a burlesque show hosted by Boink. Jesse wasn't interested in going, so Lawrence and I attended the burlesque show the next night. Sadly, the dancing and teasing by the performers were pretty tame. I expected fireworks shooting out of the women's nipples, or at least windmills. The host(ess) however was the most entertaining part. (S)he was a 6'4", big boned, African-American, sassy drag queen. Her antics for the night included having a frat boy kiss her ass to get on stage, and riding another frat boy's ass on stage, only to pull his wallet and cell phone from under her dress after he managed to wiggle away.

The next day, on a whim, Lawrence, Jesse, Hillary (his gf), and I escaped from a cold Boston to an even colder Montreal, where Jesse and Hillary attended university (not college... apparently when you say you attended "college" in Canada, it means you graduated their equivalent of community colllege. Who knew?) The city is lovely, even in the blistering cold. We were introduced to Quebecois bar food, poutine. Consisting of hot fries and gravy with melting cheese curds interspersed, this delicious and absolutely satisfying dish is every cardiologist's dream. We were given the insider's tour of Montreal bagels, coffee, and bars. We also walked around the old port and one of the outer islands that was hosting a winter carnival, but at 20 below zero celsius, we didn't last more than 5 minutes outside at a time. And everything in Montreal is so cheap because of currency conversion! As Lawrence put, it's like everything's 20% off all the time. We did not partake in any "Canadian Ballet", however, but rather had a pretty wholesome weekend, well relative to being in Montreal anyway.

And that's what I did during my 1.5 weeks of intersemester break. :)

I Feel Old

2007-01-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

My best friend's birthday was on Sunday. The lazy ass I am is mailing her card out tomorrow. My tardiness is mostly due to my crazy finals last week. As I was writing her message on her card this evening, it dawned on me that I've known her for A DECADE. I've been best friends with her for 10 years! HOLY CRAP! When did I get this old that I've had best friends for a decade?

Doubts and Hopes

2007-01-21T10:26:00.000-05:00

Pressure. I feel like I've been under a lot of pressure with one semester to go for my post-bac. I've recently started a new clinical research job that requires 20 hours per week of my time, not including my commute. I still have my three premed classes and my volunteer work. I'm also studying for the MCATs on my own - no regular MCAT class will fit into my crazy work/class schedule and I feel like I can study on my own anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if this is all worth it. Is it worth not having any free time at all for the next 5 months until I finish my requirements and take the MCAT? Is it worth spending another 4 years in school, and who knows how many more as a resident? Will I eventually just go back to business anyway? As Lawrence and I were watching the Godfather yesterday, I felt the weight of it all just crushing me. Part of me feels like I'm burning out.

But then I thought about how I have only 5 months to go with this hectic lifestyle. If I can make it through, I'll have a year to just work, and (crossing my fingers of an acceptance) upon entering med school, I'll have nothing to do but study- no job, no resume building. And really, I'm loving the clinical aspect of my new job. I love seeing patients, and am so much happier doing this than I ever was playing with excel spreadsheets. I've sort of found the light at the end of a long tunnel, remembering why it is I've decided to do this. With all the stress and pressure in the coming months, I just hope I can pull it off.

Chugging Through

2007-01-14T18:23:00.000-05:00

I'm a third of the way through finals. Bio is on Wednesday and Orgo is on Thursday. I can't wait for this semester to finally be over.

Yes, the "True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl" Episode is Accurate

2006-12-26T23:52:00.000-05:00

I finally watched "True Life - I'm a Staten Island Girl" two days ago with my sisters. I'm sad to say that the show accurately portrayed your typical Staten Island girl. Many of the girls here do have the accent, the burnt-straight, highlighted/dyed hair, the carefully done nails, pounds of make-up, tanning-salon-orange skin, and the mentality that all girls are competition for guys. Many of the guys here are of the type that Angela (character in the show) is attracted to. They have the same accent, spiky and overly gelled hair, the muscles (often on display through white, sleeveless wife-beater shirts), the golden chain, the tanning-salon-orange skin, and the huge ego. I grew up fully immersed in this Italian-American/Staten Island subculture. It's a wonder I turned out (relatively) normal and got off the Island.

Lawrence is Special

2006-12-20T02:11:00.000-05:00

Lawrence is special in that he'll get completely obsessed with something and will just immerse himself in it nonstop until he gets sick of it, at which point he drops it like he never knew it existed. He does this a lot with food. When he was younger he loved wonton soup (it was apparently his favorite thing to eat) and had it every time his family ordered Chinese food from the time he can remember till he was about 10. He then got sick of it, and has refused to have it since. It's been 13 years since he last had wonton soup.

Lawrence's new obsession has been this video that he's been playing nonstop since the weekend. He can't get enough of it, and manages to laugh out loud every time he sees it. He can't stop talking about it either. He's been browsing through forums talking about this video, and is happy that they show that "J.T" has been earning "street cred" with this video. As I type this, Lawrence is reading a "Memphis Flyer" site that's saying something about "J.T." and the video.

The only saving grace right now is that he has that history of eventually getting sick of his obsession and just drops it. I hope that happens soon. Although I find the video hilarious, I don't know how many more times I can watch it. Please do watch it though yourself because (1) it actually is funny, but more importantly (2) so you can imagine what it's like to live with a very special Lawrence. :)

Note on picture: Handsome Lawrence is sad that a pigeon pooped on his pants while walking along 59th St at the southern end of Central Park. He thought he had sidestepped being pooped on since he noticed the poop as it was on its way down, but he wasn't fast enough in moving out of the way, as evidenced in the picture above. Lawrence is special. :)

Christmas?

2006-12-14T11:27:00.000-05:00

Today is December 14, a mere 11 days before Christmas. I haven't even thought of Christmas shopping yet, and our apartment is nowhere near Christmas festive. Today's high is 57 degrees, so I get to run in my skimpy shorts. I'm nowhere near finals time, whereas at Penn the flurry of finals before the winter break was the last hurdle before going home for Christmas. (Stupid Harvard holds finals 2-3 weeks after New Year's). It doesn't feel like Christmas is coming at all.

The Grates!

2006-12-08T08:38:00.000-05:00

After two tough midterms this week and before studying for my last big one on Monday, I attended an Oxford Collapse/The Grates/We Are Scientists concert with Lawrence at the Middle East in Central Square. It was awesome! Opening acts are usually a gamble, especially at small indie shows, but both Oxford Collapse and The Grates were amazing.

The Grates, in fact, are my new favorite band. They are an Australian band with such great energy and enthusiasm, and their music is upbeat, catchy and creative. The lead singer has an unfathomable amount of energy. She didn't stop jumping around the stage the entire set, almost exactly like the way she dances in the video for their song Science is Golden.

After the show Lawrence and I stuck around so I could buy a Grates t-shirt. We ended up talking to The Grates' lead singer and drummer, with both of whom I was able to take the picture I posted here. They were so friendly, and it was clear from our conversation that they really love what they do. Seeing their passion channeled into a creative, successful outlet just warmed my heart and won me over. :) Well, they also won me over because the lead singer thinks I have the shiniest hair in the world. I'm a sucker for compliments.

In My Element

2006-11-24T11:32:00.000-05:00

I'm home. :) I arrived late Tuesday night and literally have not wasted an hour since. I've caught up already with so many dear, old friends and spent quality time with my family, and it's only Friday morning. Tonight brings the promise of a wild New York night, and tomorrow a day of indulgence in everything New York. I love it.

Gerbils!

2006-11-20T00:54:00.000-05:00

Lawrence and I have recently acquired 4 3-month old sister gerbils. Sadly, we sold our fish and tank on craigslist since we didn't have the time to properly clean the tank regularly. Though I was a bit heartbroken for the week we went petless, I was excited to get mammalian, interactive pets.

We've had the gerbils for two weeks now and I think I've played with them and talked to them everyday. :) They keep me company as I study at home alone for most of the day. Even though I spend all this time with them, however, I still can't tell them apart. Two are the same darker shade of grey/brown (Burmese I think) and the other two are a lighter shade of the same grey/brown (Siamese I think). As a result, we still haven't named them yet. We just collectively refer to them as "the girls".

Even though Lawrence and I will be gone for only a couple of days for Thanksgiving, we've arranged for our neighbor friends to take the gerbils while we're gone. I wanted to make sure they had human interaction and weren't alone. I know- I'm a little ridiculous. I can't believe how attached I've gotten to the girls. Can you imagine what I'm going to be like with a dog, or patients, or children? I'm either going to have great bedside manners or a smothering effect. Right now, I think I have little of both, but luckily the gerbils can't talk back, so I can smother them all I want. :)

I miss home.

2006-11-17T00:14:00.000-05:00

"I know New York. I need New York. I know I need unique New York."
- "Song for Myla Goldberg", The Decemberists